‘Are you a virgin’, Bihar medical college asks new employees

An employee joining the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences is expected to declare that “I am a bechelor/widower/virgin” or that “I am married and have only one wife living/married to a person who has no other wife living”.

A government medical institute in Patna has left its new employees stumped with questions on their virginity and “number of wives”.

The “marital declaration” form issued by the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), first asks the employee to declare “that I am a bechelor/widower/virgin (sic)”. Otherwise the employee should state that “I am married and have only one wife living/married to a person who has no other wife living” else he or she “[is] married and have more than one wife/married to a person who has another wife living”.

The form is part of the procedure adopted for doctors and staff joining the institute.

Established in 1983, “on the lines of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) of New Delhi”, the IGIMS is one of the biggest healthcare institutions in the State. The only super-specialty institute of Bihar, IGIMS recently hit headlines for the wrong reasons while refusing to provide a stretcher to the parents of a dead child up to an ambulance.

Requesting anonymity, an IGIMS doctor and senior faculty told The Hindu that “if changes are required in the form it can only be done at the government level”. However, some doctors and staff said they felt “embarrassed over the questionnaire”. “How can it be asked whether a person is virgin or not... it’s also an attack on one’s privacy,” said a junior-level doctor. However a friend of his added over phone that it “must be a mischief done by someone”.