PGI exam: With cops nosing around, girls bear the brunt

A girl struggling with a nose pin standing outside a school at 9 am, a boy being asked to remove his shoes, and a woman cop running her hands through the long hair of another girl. This was the scene outside one of the exam centres for the entrance examination for MD/MS courses at PGIMER.

Another girl was arguing with the security personnel for a religious thread which she was wearing and did not want to remove. To her bad luck, she was asked to remove it if she wanted to sit in the examination. In another corner, a girl was seen struggling with soap to remove her toe ring.

Scenes at the other exam centres were no different where male candidates were seen struggling to find a safe place to keep their expensive watches, bags, wallets and so were the women candidates who could be seen struggling to remove their tight toe rings with each other’s help.

A visit to a few of the exam centres by a team of Chandigarh Newsline in the morning revealed the tight arrangements made by the PGIMER authorities after having faced significant embarrassment barely a month ago when the same exam had to be cancelled due to a cheating racket which was busted on November 10.

Yes, after all that the PGIMER had claimed was right in place at each of the 10 exam centres, from women cops frisking the women candidates from head to toe and running their hands all over them including the hair and socks.

Even the hair clips and handkerchiefs were not spared and everyone was asked to leave them outside.

Last time, there were seven girls, all of them dummy candidates, who were wearing pin-hole cameras in their clothes and tiny Bluetooth devices inside their ears. This time inside the exam centres, PGI invigilators announced that all the girls would tie their hair properly so that their ears are exposed.

Interestingly, most of the candidates were caught unawares about the instructions which the PGI authorities had uploaded on their website almost a fortnight back. So most of them had come wearing jewellery pieces and many of them were even carrying wallets, purses and were wearing watches which they were asked to remove outside.

A minor argument was witnessed at DAV School, Sector 15, which was one of the centres wherein a group of candidates, most of whom had come from far-off places, were carrying their travelling bags with them. When they were asked to keep these outside, they asked the staff to take responsibility of their belongings. However, the staff on duty said it was not their responsibility and they had clearly written in the instructions that nobody would be responsible for the belongings of the candidates. The matter was later sorted out.

A girl removing her earring before entering the examination hall at St Joseph’s School in Sector 44, Chandigarh, on Saturday