A newly recruited AYUSH doctor in Bihar was taken aback on Monday when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar pulled the hijab (veil) off her face, while she was receiving her letter of appointment.
The incident, a video clip of which has gone viral on social media, took place at 'Samvad', the CM's secretariat, where appointment letters were given away to more than 1,000 AYUSH doctors.
The authenticity of the video could not be verified independently.
According to the CMO, the appointees included 685 Aurveda doctors, while 393 were Homeopaths and 205 practised the Unani system of medicine.
Out of them, 10 appointees were handed over job letters by Kumar, while the rest got those online.
When it was the turn of Nusrat Parveen, who had turned up wearing a hijab across her face, the 75-year-old CM frowned and exclaimed "what is this?".
The chief minister, who stood atop a raised platform, then bent down and pulled the hijab down.
The flustered appointee was, thereafter, hastily pulled aside by an official present on the occasion, while Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary, who stood beside Kumar, was seen tugging at the latter's sleeve, in an apparent bid to restrain him.
Meanwhile, opposition parties like the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress shared the video clip on their social media accounts, and claimed that the incident was the latest proof of the JD-U supremo's "unstable mental health".