My sister received her AIIMS MBBS entrance examination admit card yesterday. Second column in “Important Instructions” in the admit card says about items that are prohibited inside the examination hall within which scarf has found its place. Besides the given list of prohibited items, it empowers the AIIMS representatives at the examination centre to prohibit any other item or to give any instruction or to take any decisions as may be necessary for the proper and fair conduct of the examination. These instructions are inherently unjust and give rise to serious issues. All these instructions are inhuman as they interfere with internationally recognized and constitutionally guaranteed basic fundamental human rights.
It’s a shame on the entire educational system of the country to have such ridiculous and cruel instructions for conducting an examination in which majority of participants are minors. Entrusting the AIIMS representatives with such blanket and unregulated arbitrary power is against the constitutional goal of equality as it is a well settled law of the land that “arbitrariness is antithesis to equality”( E. P. Royappa vs. State Of Tamil Nadu & Anr,1974 AIR 555).
It’s inhumane to torture candidates like this in 21st century when we are having a tremendous outbreak of technologies to find out all the malpractices that may take place inside the examination hall. Moreover it’s a problem that can be easily overcome by having network jammers, more number of invigilators, metal detectors and CCTV surveillance. Instead of having such precautionary measures torturing students just before the examination and making an atmosphere of terror is violative of their right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of Indian Constitution as the procedure is not just fair and reasonable.
Another very important issue is that by prohibiting scarf, it also prohibits headscarf which is treated as a religious mandate by many Muslim and Christian (nun) communities. It is directly interfering with their religious right guaranteed under Article 25 of Indian constitution. In the light of the single bench decision of Kerala high court, which has been upheld by the division bench wearing head scarf is an essential religious practice of Muslim community. Court made it clear that no instructions can interfere with such fundamental rights and it also instructed CBSE to take appropriate measures at the stage of inviting applications itself(Amnah Bint Basheer vs Central Board Of Secondary Education,WP(C).No. 6813 of 2016 (B)). Unfortunately these state machineries including CBSE and AIIMS disregarded that judgment and are repeatedly violating fundamental rights of the candidates.
Besides all these, throughout all the stages of examination starting from the invitation of the application itself AIIMS and CBSE were blatantly violating the fundamental rights as well as court directions. This can be exemplified by the AIIMS requirements of showing ear in the photograph of the candidates which is to be uploaded while applying for AIIMS entrance examination, as well as the mandatory requirement of providing Adhar number for NEET examination conducted by CBSE. The requirement as to photograph is clear violation of right to freedom of religion of Muslim girls, requirement as to Adhar card is clearly a mockery of expression.
It’s high time that we unite against these inhuman mechanisms infringing fundamental human rights so that we could protect the social democracy of India as envisaged by the constitution.
