The Supreme Court decided on Wednesday to hear next week a bundle of petitions contesting the Karnataka High Court’s decision not to overturn the prohibition on hijab in state educational institutions. A bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Krishna Murari and Hima Kohli took notice of lawyer Prashant Bhushan’s remarks that the cases had been filed a long time ago but had not yet been scheduled for hearing.
‘The girls are falling behind in their schoolwork,’ Bhushan remarked. ‘ It will be listed sometime next week,’ the bench added. Following a month-long debate over the Hijab dispute, the Karnataka High Court rejected petitions brought by a group of Muslim girls from the Government Pre-University Girls College in Udupi in March. The pupils requested permission to wear Hijab in class.
When girls were refused admittance into the college for wearing headscarves, the dispute erupted. When dozens of saffron-clad men barged inside the university to oppose the students, the situation quickly turned into a hotspot of communal strife.
Despite the government’s insistence on a consistent code, the protest quickly spread throughout the state. In its decision, the HC stated that the need of wearing a school uniform is just a reasonable limitation that is legally permitted and that pupils cannot object to, as a three-judge panel of the court remarked.
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