5 Women Arrested After Girls Asked To Remove Bra For Exam

There is no justification for the alleged actions of officials under the National Testing Agency (NTA) at an examination centre in Kollam, Kerala. On Thursday, according to an FIR filed by a parent, several young women were forced to remove their innerwear by officials as they sought to appear for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions to MBBS and BDS programmes. The current episode is not the first such instance: In 2017, “overzealous” teachers at a Kerala school were suspended for asking a girl to remove her innerwear before entering a NEET exam centre.

To humiliate students for an article of clothing — or, as the “rules” would have it, “any ornaments/ metallic items” — is unconscionable and symptomatic of a deep suspicion of aspirants on the part of the NTA. How can an earring, or a hook on an item of clothing lead to cheating? And exactly how many candidates smugged cheat sheets in these wires? Yet, the NTA’s list of prohibited items — which includes shoes, jewellery and all metallic objects — only empowers the person on the ground to police the bodies of aspirants. Bureaucratic “rules” too must aspire to common sense. As a governance reform in the healthcare and education sector, the NEET has much to recommend it. Like the Joint Entrance Exam for engineering, the NEET has the potential to ensure uniformity in admission standards across states and objectivity and transparency in candidate selection. What is common here is an assumption of guilt — of “cheating” — and the impunity arising from the vaguely-worded rules used to humiliate students.

Five women, including three who forced girls appearing for the NEET medical entrance exam to remove their bra, have been arrested, sources in Kerala Police said. The National Women’s Commission has taken note of the issue that triggered outrage.

Here are the Top 10 points in this big story(Girls Asked To Remove Bra For Exam):

1. The police filed a case after receiving three complaints that girl students were subjected to humiliation when metal hooks on their bra beeped during security checks.  A case was filed against those who carried out security checks and allegedly asked the girls to take off their bra.
2. “They asked us to remove our bra and put it on a table. All the bras were bunched together. We didn’t even know if we would get ours back when we returned,” said a teen who went through the harrowing experience.
3. “When we were writing the exam, we put our hair in front as we had no shawl to cover ourselves…There were boys and girls and it was really difficult and uncomfortable,” she added.
4. The National Testing Agency, which denied the allegations, formed a special team to investigate the matter hours after a state minister urged the Centre to take action.
5. An autonomous testing organisation which conducts the medical entrance exam, NTA said the NEET dress code “does not permit any such activity alleged”.
6. On Monday, the father of the 17-year-old had filed a complaint with the police, saying his daughter was forced to take the three-hour exam without a bra at the Mar Thoma Institute of Information Technology.
7. “Is your future or innerwear big for you? Just remove it and don’t waste our time (sic),” his complaint quoted security personnel as saying. Ninety per cent girl students had a similar experience, his complaint added.
8. The exam centre superintendent in Kollam told the National Testing Agency that the complaint was “fictitious and filed with wrong intentions” .
9. On Tuesday, Kerala Higher Education Minister R Bindu wrote to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, calling the incident a “”naked assault on the dignity and honour of the girl students” and seeking strong action.
10. “The shame and shock of this unexpected turn of events have affected the morale and composure of the students whose performance in the test was consequently affected,” Ms Bindu wrote.

With Thanks Reference to: ndtv(https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/5-women-arrested-after-girls-asked-to-remove-bra-for-neet-exam-10-points-3174548)Indianexpress(https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/failing-the-test-2-8039881/)