Refusing to give a specific date for urgent listing of a plea on Hijab row, the Supreme Court on Thursday said that the Karnataka High Court is already examining the issue and it should be allowed to decide it.

The top court refrained from giving a specific date for the urgent listing of a plea seeking transfer of petitions from the Karnataka High Court, which is currently examining the permissibility of hijab in schools and colleges.

“Why should we jump in at this stage? It does not look nice,” Chief Justice N V Ramana told senior advocate Kapil Sibal when he mentioned the matter.

He submitted that the matter deals with what is happening in Karnataka, and is also spreading in the entire country.

As Sibal said the exams are just two months away and his client has filed the petition today, the Chief Justice emphasized that let the high court hear the matter first.

When Sibal submitted that the top court could list the transfer petition and keep it pending, the bench said after the top court interferes in the matter, then the high court would never hear it saying the issue is pending before the apex court.

On Sibal insisting that this issue needs to be considered, as schools and colleges are closed, the bench reiterated, “Let HC hear it first”.

Sibal pressed that he is only asking the top court to list the petition, and if the high court does not pass an order, then this court can transfer it to itself and hear it. After a brief hearing in the matter, the Chief Justice, “we will see”.

Fathima Bushra, the petitioner, is a student at the PU College, Kundapura in Karnataka’s Udupi, where the protests began after the authorities recently ordered students to remove their hijab in class. “It is imperative that Supreme Court take it upon itself to decide once and for all the extent of protection that a Muslim girl has under the Constitution of India,” says Fathima’s petition.

The plea filed by Bushra said: “The said fundamental rights of the petitioner have been violated with impunity on one hand by the Respondent which has denied entry to the petitioner into the college, thereby debarring her from attending her regular classes until the petitioner and similarly situated girls remove their headscarf/hijab”.

“The petitioner does not wear the hijab as a form of any political symbolism or to intimidate or heckle or belittle her fellow classmates or any other person. The state machinery has absolved itself of its obligation to ensure a conducive environment for petitioner and similarly situated girls to exercise their fundamental rights,” it says.

“Segregating Muslim girls and forcing them to sit in a room other than the regular classroom is an affront to the equal protection clause in Article 14,” the petitioner stated.