The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a writ petition filed by a Class XI student of Tagore Public School, Attarsuiya, Prayagraj, seeking permission to wear a headscarf (Hijab) along with the school’s prescribed uniform. A Division Bench of Justice J.J. Munir and Justice Indrajeet Shukla held that where a school’s dress code is uniform, bona fide, non-discriminatory and intended to maintain discipline and institutional identity, the prescription of uniform primarily falls within the school’s domain.
The student had studied at the school from Classes VI to X and claimed to have worn a hijab without objection. However, the school denied her Class XI admission after she insisted on wearing the hijab with the prescribed uniform, maintaining that an exemption would undermine its uniform policy. She then approached the District Magistrate. The Court noted that the school is a private unaided CBSE-affiliated institution and questioned the authorities’ jurisdiction in seeking a report from it.
Before the High Court, she argued that wearing the hijab was protected under Articles 14 and 19(1)(a) and constituted an essential religious practice, contending that being required to remove it infringed her dignity and freedom of expression.
Rejecting the contention, the Bench observed that the petitioner was willing to wear the prescribed uniform but sought to add a headscarf to it. The Court held that her earlier practice of wearing the scarf without objection did not create an enforceable right to compel the school to relax or alter its uniform policy.
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“The mere fact that the petitioner might have worn a headscarf earlier when she was reading in the lower classes without objection from the School, cannot by itself create a vested or enforceable right to compel the School to alter or relax their uniform policy for students seeking admission to Class-XI.”
The Bench emphasised that a school uniform serves purposes beyond merely prescribing clothing, including discipline, equality among students and institutional identity. It observed that a common dress code also creates a religion-neutral atmosphere by applying the same requirements to students of different faiths.
The Court also considered earlier decisions of the Kerala, Bombay and Karnataka High Courts concerning headscarves and school dress codes. It particularly noted the Karnataka High Court’s Full Bench judgment in Resham v. State of Karnataka, AIR 2022 Kant 81, which held that wearing a hijab had not been established as an essential religious practice on the material placed before it. The Allahabad High Court noted that the Supreme Court’s decision in the subsequent hijab case had resulted in a split verdict and that there was still no authoritative final Supreme Court pronouncement settling the issue.
The Bench further noted that the Supreme Court had stayed, in an interim order in another matter, a clause prohibiting hijab, cap or badge in a college. However, it said that the interim order contained no reasons and therefore did not constitute a binding precedent.
On the facts of this case, the Court found that the assertion that wearing a headscarf was an essential religious practice was unsupported by sufficient pleadings or authoritative religious material. The Court also noted that photographs placed on record showed that, apart from the petitioner, other girl students, including those belonging to the same religious community, were not wearing headscarves.
The Bench ultimately held that the school was requiring conformity with its institutional discipline rather than seeking to curtail the petitioner’s freedom of faith. It observed that permitting individual departures from the prescribed uniform on subjective grounds could undermine the very concept of a uniform and shift control over school discipline from the institution to individual students.
The writ petition was accordingly dismissed, with no order as to costs.
