Karnataka: girls stopped from taking class 12 exams in burqa

Two girls in Karnataka's Udupi were not allowed to write their class 12 exams on Friday because they showed up at the examination hall wearing burqas.

The two girls, who were also among the petitioners who had moved court asking that hijabs be allowed inside classrooms, tried to convince the invigilators and the college principal of Vidyodaya PU College in Udupi for close to 45 minutes, according to a NDTV report but left the premises without taking the exam as the authorities refused to budge.

The incident follows a nation-wide controversy over wearing of hijabs by Muslim girls inside classrooms.

It started after several colleges in Karnataka's Udupi and elsewhere refused to allow girls into classrooms if they were wearing a hijab, citing a law that the head covering was allowed inside schools but not inside classrooms for the sake of uniformity.

The matter then reached the Karnataka High Court which ruled that wearing of hijab was not an essential religious practice in Islam and said that students had to follow the law laid out by the state government.

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