Karnataka BJP allegedly shares personal details of girls, then deletes tweet

BENGALURU: The Karnataka unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) allegedly shared the personal details of the girls from Udupi including their residential addresses who had approached the Karnataka High Court against the ban on wearing of hijabs in classrooms. Apparently after coming under criticism, the party deleted its tweets in English as well as Kannada.

The party had tweeted, "Five of the students involved in #HijabRow are minors. Don't CONgress leaders Sonia, Rahul & Priyanka have any guilt for using minor girls to stay relevant in politics? How low will they stoop to win elections? Is this what "Ladki hoo lad sakti hoon" means, @priyankagandhi?"

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Along with the tweet, the party put out the personal details of the girls from Udupi, who had filed petitions in the High Court. Taking a strong view against BJP's Karnataka unit, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi tweeted, "Shameless @BJP4Karnataka tweets the addresses of the minor girls in order to attack the opposition. Do you realise how insensitive, sick and pathetic this is? I request @DgpKarnataka and @TwitterIndia to take action and take down the tweet. Also seek @GoI_MeitY intervention."

The Rajya Sabha member also demanded that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights take this up immediately. "This is a criminal act to share names and addresses of minors. This is unacceptable," Chaturvedi further tweeted.

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Karnataka is witnessing a row over Hijab versus Saffron scarves, which started since December end in Udupi in coastal Karnataka. On January 1, six girl students of a college in Udupi attended a press conference held by Campus Front of India (CFI) in the coastal town protesting against the college authorities denying them entry into the classroom by wearing Hijab. This was four days after they requested the principal permission to wear Hijabs in classes which was not allowed. Till then, students used to wear Hijab to the campus and entered the classroom after removing the scarves, the college principal Rudre Gowda had said.

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"The institution did not have any rule on Hijab-wearing as such and since no one used to wear it to the classroom in the last 35 years. The students who came with the demand had the backing of outside forces," Rudre Gowda had said. The full bench of the Karnataka High Court where the girls had petitioned is hearing the matter on day-to-day basis. The 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. PTI GMS RS GMS SS SS