Five students of IIT-Roorkee have been suspended and an inquiry instituted into a seemingly harmless competition held on the campus in which boys, holding lipsticks in their mouth, were supposed to apply them on the lips of their female counterparts.
The “lipstick competition”, part of the ongoing inter-collegiate student festival “Thomso 10”, earned the wrath of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Hindu Jagran Manch which staged demonstration at the gates of the institute on Friday evening. The protesters shouted slogans, threatened action and burnt effigies.
Responding to their demands, the Uttarakhand government set up an inquiry into the incident and Uttarakhand education minister Govind Singh Bisht said, “We will not tolerate any obscenity in our state.”
The IIT-Roorkee authorities have also expressed “regret” at the incident and said the competition was organised on the spur of the moment and that the authorities did not have prior information. “We have suspended five students who had reportedly organised the event,” said a spokesman.
According to sources, the majority of the male students who participated in the lipstick contest belonged to other colleges participating in the festival but the female students mainly belonged to IIT-Roorkee.
One of the female participants felt the issue was being blown out of proportion.
“It was pure fun and there was nothing obscene in it. The participation in the contest was voluntary and conducted in an open area. Girls and boys have much more physical proximity on the dance floors than they did in this contest. Our parents did not object but the government and the college authorities have apparently succumbed to pressure from the cultural cops,” she said.
One of the suspended students said they were submitting explanations to the college authorities and that they would move court if further action was initiated against them.