Madras High Court dismisses plea to ban religious attire in schools

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Monday dismissed as withdrawn, a PIL petition to ban students wearing dresses exhibiting their respective religions while attending classes. A division bench of Justices M Duraiswamy and T V Thamilselvi dismissed the plea from K Gopinath, president of Hindu Munnetra Kazhagam, today.

The petitioner's counsel sought to withdraw the petition, when the bench made him known that similar pleas were pending before the Supreme Court, in an apparent reference to the appeal against a Karnataka High Court order upholding the ban on the hijab inside classrooms.

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"Chapter 1V, Rule 14(iii) of code for uniforms in primary and nursery schools stipulated that the students should wear the uniforms prescribed by the respective school managements. However, of late, attempts were deliberately being made to violate this stipulation," the petition claimed.

Recently, in Karnataka, two pre-university college students from Udupi who had approached the Karnataka High Court challenging the Karnataka hijab ban, returned from the exam centre on Friday as they were not allowed to write the PUC exam wearing hijab.