After 11 days of hearing, the Karnataka High Court reserved judgments in a batch of pleas filed by students against the ban on wearing the hijab inside educational campuses. The High Court asked all the parties, as well as those who have filed intervenor applications, to file their written submissions to the court. The High Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi heard on a day-to-day basis in the last two weeks a batch of petitions filed by some Muslim girls seeking permission to wear the hijab in educational institutions where a uniform has been prescribed.
During the hearing on Friday, the High Court also said that it has sought a report from the state government on the role of radical organisations behind the Hijab controversy in the state. Presenting his argument before the bench, senior advocate Subhash Jha said the agitation pushing for wearing of hijabs in class-rooms was the handiwork of radical organisations, which are funded by some foreign nations.
"An agitation of this magnitude cannot be created overnight and therefore if this agitation is engineered and this is obviously engineered, funded by some organisation, this cannot start out of the blue. This is a sinister design," Jha told the bench.
On Thursday, February 24, The Karnataka government informed the High Court that a First Information Report (FIR) has been registered against the members of the Campus Front of India (CFI), who had allegedly threatened some teachers in the Government Pre-University Girls College in Udupi district. This was after the government PU college in Udupi, which is at the centre of the hijab row in Karnataka, told the Karnataka High Court that the CFI ‘instigated’ six students to start wearing a hijab to class.