After a five-day break to cool communal tensions over the hijab ban row, high schools for up to Class X reopened in Karnataka on Monday. Colleges, meanwhile, are on holiday till February 16. At the Rotary Educational Society School in Mandya, students, teachers and staff were seen removing their hijabs to enter the school, even as parents demanded that they be allowed to remove them once inside a classroom.
As a precautionary measure, prohibitory orders have been imposed near campuses for six days till Saturday in Udupi and Mangaluru. Section 144 of CrPC has been clamped around 200-metre radius of all the high schools from Monday till February 19. The Karnataka High Court will resume hearing pleas filed by Muslim girls to be allowed to attend classes wearing hijabs Monday. On Friday, it passed an interim order asking students not to wear any religious dress to class in educational institutions that have prescribed uniforms. Meanwhile, the Opposition is set to question the BJP-led state government on the issue in the Assembly session that is scheduled to begin Monday as well.
In other news, the Karnataka High Court has quashed the amendments made in September 2021 to the Karnataka Police Act, 1963 by the state government to ban all forms of gambling in the state — including online gambling. However, while clarifying that the court wasn’t striking down the entire Karnataka Police (Amendment) Act, 2021, the Bench added that it will not interfere if the state brings in a new law that is in consonance with the Constitution.
