Hijab Row: Female Students From Karnataka Approach Supreme Court For Urgent Hearing

On Wednesday (22 February), a group of female students from Karnataka have approached the Supreme Court for an urgent hearing on their plea seeking permission to sit for exams while wearing hijab.

The exams are expected to begin from 9 March and the CJI has assured that he would look into the matter and accordingly form a bench.

The matter was mentioned by Advocate Shadan Farast before the CJI seeking urgent listing arguing that exams are scheduled to commence from 9 March and that these female students will lose a year if they are not allowed to sit for exams.

To the aforesaid, the CJI enquired as to who was stopping these girls from taking the exams, to which the counsel replied that girls are not allowed to take exams with their headscarves on and they are not ready to give exams without it.

'Therefore, urgent relief is required for them,' the counsel argued.

Earlier, the Supreme Court in October 2022 delivered a split verdict on the ban on wearing hijab in educational institutions in Karnataka.

While one judge affirmed that the state government is authorised to enforce uniforms in schools, the other called the hijab a matter of choice that cannot be stifled by the state.

The petitioner approached the Supreme Court after the Karnataka High Court, in March last year, held that the wearing of hijab by Muslim women is not mandatory in Islam and that the Karnataka government was well within power to enforce the uniform mandate.