College girls protest over dress code, allege harassment
Following incident of students going missing from college, authorities decided to ensure uniform of ‘salwar’, ‘kurta’ and ‘dupatta’, but I never said students should make two plaits.
DR ANITA SUDAN, college principal
JAMMU: Angry over being forced to follow a dress code, over 300 students of the Government College for Women staged protest and blocked the road near Parade Ground here on Tuesday against the management’s “diktats”.
Raising slogans and demanding immediate removal of the college principal, they alleged that they were denied entry into the institution for allegedly not following timings and violating the dress code announced earlier this month.
Infuriated over “misbehaviour” by the college authorities, including principal Dr Anita Sudan, the students pro tested for over two hours.
“The principal, college teachers and the staff at the entrance gate misbehaved with us. They to re our uniform sand some of us were even dragged inside the college gate ,” said a group of agitating students outside the college. “We are made to sit outside the class as punishment for not following dress code, like not wearing a proper uniform and making two plaits. The students are deliberately failed in the class tests and even lewd remarks and abusive words are used against them,” claimed the agitating students.
With veiled faces, they alleged that the watchman at the entrance gate often hurls lewd remarks at them and their families. Speaking to HT over phone, college principal Dr Anita Sudan said following recent case of four students going missing from the college, she asked the disciplinary committee to ensure discipline in the college.
“We decided to ensure timings at the entrance gate and proper college uniform of salwar, kurta and dupatta (barring married girls), but I never said the girls should make two plaits. We also looked into the allegations of lewd remarks by the watchman and I questioned him in front of the girls, but they recanted,” she said. The principal added that it is indispensable for the college management to ensure fixed timing sand proper dress code.
Most of the protesters were in uniform, but a college official said some a few students were in denim sand T-shirts.
Additional district development commissioner Arun Manhas said, “It was decided that the peon deployed at the main gate willbeimmediatelyremoved.As far as the allegations of passing of lewd remarks, there was no credible evidence .,” he said.