New Delhi: Hearing the petitions on the hijab controversy, the Karnataka High Court on Wednesday said the students should follow the uniform prescribed by educational institutes till the disposal of the case.
"We are making it very clear that whether a degree college or a PU College, if a uniform has been prescribed, that has to be followed so long as the matter is pending before the court," news agency PTI quoted Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi as telling advocate Mohammed Tahir, who is the counsel for one of the petitioners seeking permission to wear hijab in the classrooms.
When a lawyer, appearing on behalf of petitioners from Udupi, pointed out that the teachers were also asked to remove their headscarf, the high court said that the interim order related to hijab was only for the students.
Tahir also urged the bench for clarity on its interim order saying that every educational institute was ‘pushing students outside’ the college citing the court order.
Notably, the full bench comprising Chief Justice Awasthi, Justice J M Khazi and Justice Krishna S Dixit has been hearing the hijab case on a day-to-day basis and has made it clear to wind it up by this weekend.
The ongoing row can be traced back to the beginning of January when some students in Udupi and Chikkamagaluru started wearing hijab to schools as a mark of protest after some of them were not allowed to enter the classroom for wearing the headscarves.
The issue then spread across the state as several other schools and colleges issued similar diktats. The opposing groups of students started protesting both for and against the right to wear hijabs in the educational institutes. Those opposing the Muslim girls donned saffron scarves.
The row then escalated further with national political parties joining in to attack each other over the issue. The protests have further gained momentum by spreading to different parts of the nation and the matter is currently in the Karnataka High Court.