Faisal Fareed
Daijiworld Media Network - Lucknow
Lucknow, Jan 9: A writ petition has been filed by Dr Nutan Thakur and Urmila Pandey, social activists from Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (IRDS), Lucknow in the Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench.
The petition requested the High Court to direct the Ministry of Women & Child Development, Government of India to frame an appropriate Government policy, including passing some appropriate Government order to all the concerned authorities to ensure that all the shops selling women undergarments need necessarily have at least one woman employee (including the shop owner), at least one Dressing Room/ Trial room and they shall necessarily remove all such lurid and improper presentation of women undergarments as being done presently, either through a female bust or independently.
Dr Nutan Thakur and Urmila Pandey also requested the High Court to direct the Ministry to get the Government policy and the accompanied Government order duly complied and monitored. Asok Pande is the counsel for the Petitioners.
The Petition says that each women and girl child have to face many specific women related problems in their day to day dealings with these shops while going there to buy their undergarments. Most of these shops have only male staff working in the shops and have no trail room, such that women feel some distinct inhibition and hesitation in explaining their requirements in greater details. This often results
in the day to day inconvenience of wearing improperly sized undergarments and also has its massive medical side-effects because improper size of the brasserie has great possibility of leading to Breast Cancer.
The petition also talks of the way the women undergarments are displayed in these shops in a protruding and improper position which is embarrassing to women. It has made reference to the latest law passed in Saudi Arabia allowing only women to work in undergarment shops in Saudi Arabia coming into force which acted as a catalyst to act.