Agency report
 
New Delhi, Apr 13: Under attack from women bureaucrats, the Centre has decided to drop controversial queries on medical issues like menstrual cycle and mammography for their annual appraisal.
 
The pro forma for health check-ups attached to the All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules of 2007, which was introduced in the middle of March, had asked women officers to provide a detailed menstrual history and details of the last menstrual period, official sources said.

Several women officers from different All India Services had protested against the fresh performa and demanded its immediate scrapping.

Officials in the department of personnel and training were silent over the protests, while the sources said a notification on the changed medical performa would be issued soon.

Among the issues to be dropped from the proforma are the date of 'last confinement' (pregnancy), mammography (a test used to detect breast cancer in women) and advice from the doctor in case the woman officer was facing any gynaecological or mammographic problem, the sources said.

Under the revised guidelines, the women officers will have to submit health information similar to data provided by their male counterparts, like blood sugar level, lipid profile, liver and kidney function test, cardiac profile and ECG, they said.

Earlier, a CPI(M) delegation, led by general secretary Prakash Karat, met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and sought his intervention for the withdrawal of the 'offensive form'.

Politburo member Brinda Karat, who was also part of the delegation, told PTI that Dr Singh described the form as 'insensitive' and assured that corrective steps would be taken in this case.

Brinda said enquiry of intimate details of woman officers in the form was 'reflective of a high degree of insensitivity' towards them and that such information was not at all required for their job profile.

Taking strong exception to the appraisal form, the Women and Child Development Ministry had also asked the DoPT to reconsider it.

WCD secretary Deepa Jain Singh, in a letter to the DoPT secretary, had asked for the appraisal form to be reconsidered, a senior Ministry official said.

Minister of state for women and child development Renuka Chowdhury also received complaints from women bureaucrats on this issue, the official said.