Guwahati: A student, 19, was forced to wrap a curtain around her legs after she turned up in shorts for an entrance test in Tezpur, Assam.
The incident happened when Jublee Tamuli went to appear for the entrance exam of Jorhat’s Assam Agricultural University (AAU) on Wednesday.
Jublee, accompanied by her father, travelled 70 km in the morning from their hometown Biswanath Chariali to Tezpur to reach on time for the test. Jublee said there was no issue as she entered the exam venue – Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (GIPS). However, trouble started inside the examination hall.
“While the security guards let me enter the premises, I was stopped by the invigilator at the exam hall. He said I would not be allowed to enter wearing shorts,” Jublee was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
According to the candidate, the admit card had no mention of any dress code. “A few days ago, I appeared for the NEET exam in the same town, wearing the exact same attire – nothing happened. Neither does the AAU have any rules about shorts, nor was there anything mentioned in the admit card. How was I to know?,” she said.
She protested, but that seem to have fallen on deaf ears. “I went crying to my father who was waiting outside. Finally, the Controller of Exams said I could take the exam, if a pair of pants could be arranged. So my father rushed to the market to buy a pair,” Jublee told the paper.
According to Jublee, she was losing precious time and was getting extremely harassed. Her father Babul Tamuli somehow managed trousers from a market about 8 km away. But the problem had been resolved by then after Jublee was given a curtain to cover her legs.
“They said that if I lacked basic common sense, how would I succeed in life,” she said, adding that it was “completely unfair”. “They did not check for COVID protocols, masks or even temperature…but they checked for shorts,” Jublee said.
For Jublee, it was the “most humiliating experience of my life”. Now, she plans to write to Assam Education Minister Ranoj Pegu about the entire episode.
GIPS principal Dr Abdul Baquee Ahmed said he was not present in the college but was “aware that such an incident had happened.”
“We do not have anything to do with the exam – our college was just hired as a venue for the exam. Even the invigilator in question was from outside. There is no rule about shorts, but during an exam, it is important that decorum be maintained. Parents should also know better,” Baquee told TIE.
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