NEW DELHI: Scores of students today staged a protest outside Women and Child Development Ministry objecting to statement by Union Minister Maneka Gandhi advocating early hostel curfew to protect girls from "hormonal outburst".
Demanding an apology from Gandhi, students from varsities across the national capital shouted slogans such as "hormonal outburst hokey rahega" and "lakshman rekha ki sarkar, nahi chalegi abki baar".
The Union Minister had earlier this week made the statement in an interview to a TV channel equating hostel curfews with "lakshman rekha".
"When you are 16 or 17 you are also hormonally very challenged. So to protect you from your own hormonal outbursts, perhaps a lakshman rekha is drawn. It really is for your own safety," she had said.
Arguing that women's safety cannot be ensured by "two gentlemen at gate with sticks", one of the protesting students said, "What the minister had said was not just violative of constitutional rights of all women students, but also disrespectful of people coming from particular regions of the country."
"We have been struggling against hostel curfew hours for the last two years and such a patriarchal statement by the minister is completely atrocious and unacceptable," said Devangana Kalita, a representative of 'Pinjra Tod', a student campaign demanding no gender-discriminatory accommodations for women students.