Bihar university issues admit card with bikini-clad woman’s photo

The Lalit Narayan Mithila University in Bihar’s Darbhanga district is back in the news for issuing a bizarre admit card to a student for an examination held by it.

A final-year woman student of the university’s affiliate SMJ College in Khajedih of Madhubani, about 145km from state capital Patna, found the photo of a woman in lingerie on her admit card.

The woman, a home science honours student, lodged a complaint with the authorities on Monday and pleaded for a new admit card carrying her picture at the earliest. The examinations are scheduled to begin from Tuesday and she has only a day at hand.

“At the time of registration, I had checked all the details before signing it. However, when I took a print-out of the admit card on Saturday, I was shocked to see the offending pictures in place of my photo and signature,” the student said.

SMJ College principal Dr Jagdish Prasad said the administration has nothing to do with any irregularities detected in the admit card as all examination related formalities are conducted by the university online.

The university’s examination controller Kulanand Yadav said he immediately ordered the offensive picture to be deleted and replaced with that of the examinee as soon as the matter was brought to his notice.

But on Monday afternoon, when this correspondent downloaded the woman’s admit card from the varsity’s website, the document neither had her photograph nor her signature.

The university, however, distanced itself from the controversy and stressed again that the mistake didn’t happen at their end.

Yadav said that he had sought a written explanation from concerned agency, which was roped in to issue admit card online.

“We would be able to trace out the lapse in this regard soon,” the controller said.

Last year in October, the university issued an admit card bearing the photograph and signature of the Hindu deity Ganesha to Krishna Kumar Roy, a first-year BCom (Hons) student of JN College, Nehera.

Authorities had held the student responsible, saying he was responsible for submitting his examination form online.

“The person at the cyber cafe had replaced his image with Ganesha’s before submitting the form. The university wasn’t at fault,” the controller had said.

LNMU is among the 16 state-run universities in Bihar and has 25 affiliated colleges and 43 constituent colleges under it.