Hijab row: Karnataka HC declines plea to restrain live streaming of court proceedings

Bengaluru, Feb 18: The Karnataka High Court bench hearing the case of Hijab row has rejected a plea to restrain live streaming of proceedings.

After the proceedings started on Friday, senior advocate Prof Ravi Varma Kumar, representing Muslim girls questioning the ban on wearing hijab in classrooms, claimed that live streaming was causing a lot of unrest in the society as the observations were taken out of context.

The advocate claimed that live streaming had become "counterproductive and children were put to hardship". However, Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi said: "Let the people understand what is the stand of the respondents also."

With a few more fresh petitions being filed, Justice Awasthi requested the petitioners that the counsels for the fresh petitions can take only 10 minutes so that respondents can also be heard.

The full bench of the High Court comprises Justice Awasthi, Justice JM Khazi and Justice Krishna M Dixit.

The High Court, in its interim order pending consideration of all petitions related to the hijab row, last week restrained all the students from wearing saffron shawls, scarves, hijab and any religious flag within the classroom.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka government on Thursday ordered that the students studying in schools managed by the minority welfare department including the Maulana Azad Model English Medium schools in the state should not wear saffron scarves, Hijab or any religious flags.

The Hijab protests began on February 4 at the Government Girls PU college in Udupi district in Karnataka when some students alleged that they had been barred from attending classes. During the protests, some students were allegedly denied entry to college wearing hijab by Muslim women earlier this month.