New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Thursday pronounce its verdict on the petitions challenging the decision of the Karnataka High Court which refused to lift the ban on hijab in schools and colleges of Karnataka, as reported by news agency ANI. A bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and Sudhanshu Dhulia, after hearing 10 days of arguments, had on September 22 reserved its verdict on the petitions against the Karnataka High Court's decision refusing to lift the ban on hijab. Justice Gupta, who is presiding over the bench, will retire on October 16.
During the hearing in the Supreme Court, lawyers appearing for the petitioners insisted that preventing Muslim girls from wearing the hijab in classes would jeopardise their studies as they could be barred from attending classes.
Some lawyers had also requested to refer the matter to a five-member constitution bench. At the same time, lawyers appearing for the state government had said that the Karnataka government's decision to create controversy over the hijab was "religion-neutral".
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The High Court had on March 15 dismissed petitions filed by a section of Muslim girl students of the Government Pre-University Girls' College in Udupi, Karnataka, seeking permission to wear the hijab inside classrooms. At the same time, the court had said that the hijab is not a part of the compulsory religious practice in Islam. Some Muslim girl students challenged the state government's decision in the High Court on February 5, 2022. Several petitions were filed in the Supreme Court challenging the High Court's decision.
Emphasising that the movement in support of wearing hijab in educational institutions was not a "spontaneous act" by some individuals, the state counsel had argued in the apex court that the government would have been "guilty of breach of constitutional duty" if it had not acted the way it did.