NEET women entrants asked to remove inners to enter exam hall

Chennai: The National Eligibility Entrance Test(NEET), entrants are believed to have had a agonizing time on Sunday at the exam centre's designated by the CBSE Board in different parts of Tamil Nadu. Female aspirants were witnessed taking off their nose pins, ear rings, high heeled sandals and in some odd cases even their inners with metal hooks. The male counterparts on the other hand,had to at the behest of exam supervisors cut their long sleeves, to make them the allowed short lengths for writing the exam.Some of the boys were seen handing over their stationary to their parents as pens were supposed to be given to them once inside the examination hall reported HT.

Footwear exchanges were seen to remain a common problem for both boys and girls who were witnessed exchanging footwear with their parents, as shoes for boys and high heeled sandals for girls were disallowed.

What was the worst narrated experience of entrants was that of a Kasaragod girl who appeared for the exam at TISK English Medium School, Kunhimangalam near Koovapram in Payyannur and who confessed to having been asked to remove her brassiere, as the metal detector beeped, while scanning over the steel buckle.

"They asked me to change the inner wear, but this is mentioned nowhere in NEET instructions," she said. "It was already 9.20am and I had only 10 more minutes to enter the hall. I asked them to permit me use the toilet to change, but they refused. There were no houses nearby. Thankfully, only lady invigilators and staff were present at the entry point. So I removed it from there itself."

The officials also asked her to remove the slippers, which she said was also not part of the NEET rules. "I have allergy problem and I cannot walk without slippers," she said. "The incidents shattered my confidence in attending the examination, for which I had been preparing for a year."

"This is entirely due to the ignorance and lack of common sense on the part of the people who were assigned to conduct the exam," was how a parent and witness to the episode explained it. "No student should face such a bad experience, anywhere in future," he added to the Deccan Herald.

Kannur District Collector Mir Mohammed Ali confessed to the administration being aware of the incident. "But we haven't received any formal complaint so far," he told DC. "If they (parents and students) can just write a detailed complaint, it would help us start an inquiry."

The aspirants were close to tears, as many were not aware of these do's and don't s of the exam hall, though the CBSE claimed that these had been publicized, earlier.

According to the officials, the do's included "bring admit card," "reach on time" at the exam centre with "only the required documents".

The don't s exercised a ban on big buttons, brooches and high-heeled shoes for women candidates and kurta-pyjama for male aspirants.

Aspirants also faced other problems like location of exam centres and demanded that landmarks and other information be given, for easy access to them. Some even complained of not being allowed to enter the examination halls, despite being delayed by only a few minutes.

The NEET entrance exam was held in Chennai, Madurai, Salem, Coimbatore, Tiruchirapalli,Tirunelveli, Vellore and Namakkal.Approximately 89,000 students took part in the 51 centres spread across cities.