Following strong condemnation from a cross section of society, authorities of the Women's College in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on Saturday withdrew the notice that imposed a dress code for the women lodgers in Abdullah Hall.
On Friday, a notice was pasted on the gates of Abdullah Hall, listing a set of instructions for the women students, which forbade them to carry more than one cell phone and also imposed a condition to be dressed in salwar kameez with dupatta at all times.
However, on Saturday the new rules that were cleared by Provost Ghazala Parveen were withdrawn.
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A senior University official said the notice was withdrawn with from immediate effect. He, however, said the contents of the notice were just “an attempt by the Provost to discipline the lodgers of Abdullah Hall.”.
The official said orders for the withdrawal of the notice were issued by Vice-Chancellor Lt. Gen. Zameeruddin Shah.
Incidentally, this is not the first time a dress code had been enforced in AMU. Recently, the VC wrote an open letter to the students asking the men to dress in ‘sherwani’ on Fridays, during university functions and if they wanted to meet him. The students were asked to “borrow” the sherwani till they got one of their own. While no specific dress was mentioned for the women, the letter urged them to dress according to the “customs and traditions of the university”.
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Girls from non-professional undergraduate programmes, who are enrolled in the Women's College, are also not allowed access to the Maulana Azad Library. In spite of intervention from the Union Human Resource Development Ministry, the National Commission for Women and several other women’s organisations, the administration is yet to dispense with the old order.