Former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Highlights
- India will run according to constitution and laws, said former Union Law Minister RS Prasad
- Ravi Shankar Prasad welcomed Karnataka High Court's verdict on hijab row
- Wearing hijab is not an Islamic essential practice, Karnataka HC pointed out
India will run according to the constitution and laws, said senior BJP leader and former Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday.
In an exclusive conversation with India TV, Ravi Shankar Prasad welcomed Karnataka High Court's verdict on hijab row saying right to choice is subject to reasonable restriction.
He said that according to law, reasonable restrictions can be applied on somone's fundamental right.
The court said that if one studies in some school where there is a dress code then it is a reasonable restriction over your fundamental right which they should accept it.
Ravi Shankar Prasad also mentioned that the practice of wearing hijab is not an Islamic essential practice which the court pointed out.
The court's order will empower women... the entire issue needs to be seen in a broader perspective, he said. The question is not about politics... but of following school and its principles, Prasad added.
Karnataka High Court gave its judgment today on hijab and it should be welcomed. The dress code of school/college must be followed by everyone of any religion, said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
Earlier in the day, the Karnataka High Court, dismissed the batch of petitions by some Muslim girl students from Udupi seeking permission to wear Hijab inside classrooms, said there was no material placed on record to prima facie show that wearing the headscarf was an essential religious practice.
The court also said that school uniform will cease to be a uniform if hijab is also allowed.
"There is absolutely no material placed on record to prima facie show that wearing of Hijab is a part of an essential religious practice in Islam and that the petitioners have been wearing hijab from the beginning," the three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, the others being Justices Krishna S Dixit and J M Khazi, noted.
"It is not that if the alleged practice of wearing hijab is not adhered to, those not wearing hijab become the sinners, Islam loses its glory and it ceases to be a religion. Petitioners have miserably failed to meet the threshold requirement of pleadings and proof as to wearing hijab is an inviolable religious practice in Islam and much less a part of 'essential religious practice'," the bench observed.
Noting that the idea of schooling is incomplete without teachers, education and a uniform, the Bench said they collectively make a singularity.
Underlining that no reasonable mind can imagine a school without uniform, the court observed that the concept of school uniform is not of a nascent origin.
(With inputs from PTI)
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