Karnataka hijab row: High court defers hearing till tomorrow

The Karnataka High Court on Monday adjourned hearing on petitions over hijab row in schools and colleges till tomorrow, news agency ANI reported.

During the hearing, advocate Dev Datt Kamat while appearing for the petitioners argued that wearing headscarves is an essential practice of the Islamic faith.

Advocate Dev Datt Kamat argued that the Karnataka government order was a non-application of mind.

“The government order is in the teeth of Article 25 and it is not legally sustainable,” Kamat argued.

Advocate Kamat also argued that Muslim women allowed to wear headscarves in public.

The high court bench comprising Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, Justice Krishna Dixit and Justice last Thursday had restrained the students from wearing hijab or religious attire till further orders.

Schools up to tenth standard reopened across the state amid tight security due to the raging Hijab controversy.

Karnataka has been rocked by the issue, with Muslim girls seeking to assert their right to wear the hijab in educational institutes. The row originated when a group of students in one Karnataka college was barred in December last year from entering classrooms and told not to wear the hijab, a headscarf used by Muslim women.

The isolated incident in one college snowballed into a major statewide issue and the controversy spread to some other colleges.