Students skip exam after being denied permission to wear hijab

Udupi: The exams for the pre-university courses began across the State on Friday. Over 5.47 lakh students took their second year PU exams. Bengaluru city had the largest concentration of students with over 60,000 taking the exam.

While Abhishek Hiremath who was arrested for posting a controversial content on social media sparking off the Hubballi riots was escorted to the exam hall by the police from his prison cell, Aliya Assadi and Resham, the second-year students of the Women's Government PU College, Udupi, whose petition challenging hijab ban in classrooms was quashed by the High Court, were turned back by the authorities at the examination centre. They came to the exam venue clad in hijab in spite of the HC ruling upholding the ban on the head scarf.

Aliya Assadi and Resham who collected their hall tickets from their college just half an hour before the commencement of the exam were told by their teachers to go over to Vidyodaya PU College centre, two kilometres away, and asked them to enter the exam hall only after removing the hijab. According to college principal Rudre Gowda both of them left after agreeing to obey the order. But when they arrived at Vidyodaya College examination hall they argued with principal Sandeep demanding that they be allowed to write the exam with hijab on. Later both Aliya and Resham left the college premises without taking the exams, said Udupi MLA and president of the College Development Committee of the Women's Government PU College, K Raghupathi Bhat.