CJI asks to wait for two days to list hijab wearing pleas for hearing
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court said that it will consider listing for hearing a slew of petitions challenging the Karnataka High Court verdict against the hijab wearing in classrooms in coming days.
When senior advocate Meenakshi Arora reminded the court about the matter, Chief Justice of India N V Ramana asked her to wait for two days.
Soon after the Karnataka HC ordered that hijab is not an essential practice under Islam and can be restricted in educational institutions, a batch of petitions has been filed by multiple Muslim organisations apart from the students on whose petition the HC pronounced its verdict.
Though the Supreme Court had filed the petitions on March 16, it did not fix a date for hearing.
The Karnataka High Court had found the hijab wearing not an essential practice in Islam to dismiss a batch of petitions filed by a section of Muslim students from the Government Pre-University Girls College in Udupi. The students sought the court's intervention that they be allowed to wear hijab inside the classroom as against the State government's circular.
One of the petitions filed against the HC argued that the HC verdict created an unreasonable classification between the Muslim and non-Muslim female students, and thereby is in straight violation of the concept of secularism which forms the basic structure of the Indian Constitution.
"The petitioners most humbly submit that the High Court has erred in creating a dichotomy of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience wherein the court has inferred that those who follow a religion cannot have the right to conscience," another petition said.