K'taka govt paid Rs 88L to hijab legal team

The Solicitor General of India is the subordinate to the Attorney General of India and is the second highest law officer in the country

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The BJP-led state government has paid Rs 88 lakh to Tushar Mehta, the Solicitor General of India and KM Nataraj, the Additional Solicitor General of India who argued on behalf of the state related to the hijab ban in the apex court, a report has revealed.

The report by an investigative digital publication, The File, has revealed that Mehta was paid Rs 39.60 lakh and Nataraj was paid Rs 48.40 lakh for arguing the case.

While Mehta appeared in the court over nine times, Nataraj appeared in court 11 times during the entire case. The advocates received Rs 4.4 lakh for each hearing as remuneration. The Solicitor General of India is the subordinate to the Attorney General of India and is the second highest law officer in the country.

Fathima Bushra vs State of Karnataka, the case which was heard by the Supreme Court last year, examined the appeals challenging the Karnataka High Court verdict that effectively upheld the ban on wearing a hijab in government schools and colleges.

The Supreme Court announced a split verdict where Justice H Gupta affirmed that the state government was allowed to enforce uniformity within the premises of a school, and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia deemed the hijab as a matter of choice which cannot be suppressed by the state.

The controversy began in an Udupi college during December 2021 and made international news in January 2022 when the Muslim girl students were pictured outside their classrooms missing classes as they had chosen to follow the practice of hijab.

The apex court took up the matter following a case in the state high court prompted by a petition filed by students of a government-run pre-university college in the Udupi district. The college had not allowed the girl students to enter the college classrooms as they were clad in hijabs.