Cong will undo hijab ban, claims woman MLA

Maqsood Maniyar | NT

Bengaluru/Kalaburagi: Congress’ two-time MLA from Kalabura gi Kanee z Fatima said that her party will roll back a virtual ban on the hijab in Karnataka’s educational institutions now that they are in power in the State. Fatima is the only Muslim woman MLA in the state, a hijab-clad lawmaker at that. She had led protests against the ban on headscarves.

The controversy erupted back in late December 2021 and January 2022 when a government PU college disallowed entry to hijab-clad women students. This is despite the college prospectus specifying that as long as the colour of the headscarf matched the uniform dupatta, it would be deemed acceptable. The issue became relevant to other colleges as right wing groups began protesting the presence of hijab-clad students in other colleges.

On February 5, 2022, the State government issued an order, demanding that students wear a uniform and “in the event of an administrative committee not selecting a uniform, clothes which disturb equality, integrity and public law and order should not be worn,” indirectly referring to headscarves.

This led to scores Muslim women students dropping out of their colleges and missing their exams. Hijabi petitioners then moved the Kar nataka High Court (HC) which then upheld the ban on March 15, 2022, declaring that hijab wasn’t “essential religious practice” in Islam. The case was then taken to the Supreme Court (SC).

On October 13 last year, the two-judge bench of the SC delivered a split verdict on the issue and referred the matter to a larger bench. Fatima said the new State government would provide relief to the girls who had “lost two years”. “The issue is in the court but obviously a new government has come in and now that there is a Congress government, we’ll try and end it (the hijab ban),” she said.

“They (the girls) are in great difficulty and we’ll try and find a solution as soon as possible,” she added. The MLA tried to downplay the fear that if the BJP government came back to power, they would impose a ban on the hijab again. “Our government will come back to power again because people don’t tolerate oppression for too long. You can see how society responded. We got 135 seats. God willing, in 2024 (Lok Sabha polls) also, Congress will come back to power,” she said.