New Delhi: The Supreme Court today refused to hear any urgent plea challenging the Karnataka High Court verdict on the Karnataka government’s ban on hijabs inside classrooms. The petitioner had sought for early hearings of the issue citing upcoming school examinations.
The Supreme Court has thereby, declined to give an urgent date of hearing for the appeals in the Karnataka Hijab case. The court said, “will hear in due course.”
The Chief Justice of India chided Advocate Devdutt Kamat, who was representing the petitioner Muslim student Aishat Shifa, asking him to not “sensationalise the issue”.
To which the Chief Justice of India said, “Exams have nothing to do with this issue.”
A fresh plea was filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday challenging the Karnataka High Court verdict which dismissed the petitions seeking permission to wear a Hijab inside the classroom saying Hijab is not a part of the essential religious practice in the Islamic faith.
The hijab ban issue has snowballed into a national headline-grabbing controversy as political parties have turned into an opportunity to attack their rivals. Many students have said they would now have no option but to drop out of government schools, and the restrictive cost of private education would mean not continuing with school at all.
The five young women from Karnataka’s Udupi — whose petition seeking that hijab be allowed in classrooms got turned down by the High Court — had told the media that they have been “denied fundamental rights” and feel “betrayed by the country”. Insisting that the issue of hijab, which should have been “resolved at a local level, now has acquired political and communal overtones,” they said they will, however, not drop out of college because of the setback.
A police case was filed against unknown people last week for allegedly threatening the Karnataka High Court Chief Justice over the order on hijab ban. The state government had said it will give “Y category” security to all the three judges who gave the verdict on the hijab matter.
In a First Information Report, lawyer Umapathi S alleged he received a video message on WhatsApp that gave an “open threat of murder” to Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi.
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