Don’t allow students in SDMC schools to wear ‘religious attire’, BJP councillor tells officials

South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) councillor and education committee chairperson Nikita Sharma has written a letter to officials stating that students of schools under the corporation should not be allowed to wear “religious attire”. This comes on the heels of schools in Dakshin Kannada and Udipi in Karnataka restricting students from wearing the hijab in classrooms.

Sharma, BJP councillor from Dwarka, instructed officials to ensure that no child comes to school wearing anything but their uniform.

In the letter, Sharma noted that students look “very beautiful” in their uniforms and that the uniforms make sure that there is “no inferiority complex between rich and poor children studying in school”.

This comes days after a parent of a Class VI student in a Delhi government school in Northeast Delhi’s Tukhmirpur complained to the area MLA that his daughter had been asked to remove her headscarf by her teacher.

Sharma told The Indian Express that she wrote the letter after learning about an incident at a Delhi government school in Mustafabad’s Tukhmirpur region where a sixth-grade student was told to remove her hijab in order to enter class.

However, BJP leader and south MCD chairperson Mukesh Suryan attempted to downplay the letter. He initially claimed that he hadn’t seen the letter sent by Sharma. “All those who come to schools should wear the uniform proscribed by the school authorities. Every school has a different uniform and the school will check what the students are wearing. The school principal will decide what the students have to wear,” said Suryan.

Many students wear dupattas and caps in schools and that can’t be regulated, he added.

Slamming the BJP councillor’s attempt to polarise the capital, Congress leader and south MCD councillor Abhishek Dutt said, “Sharma is just appeasing her pay masters and fomenting trouble. The letter has no legal standing and should not be considered. Delhi is for everyone and no one should be made unwelcome here. Everyone has the right to live with dignity.”

The letter added that the decision of some parents to send their children to school in religious attire would “create a mentality of inequality” among the students, instructing zonal officers to ensure that students only deviate from the uniform during competitions or festivities.

When asked if the same rule would apply to students wearing turbans, Sharma said it would not because “turbans are needed to tie hair” and that no correlation should be drawn between the letter and turbans because turbans are worn in every school.

In Delhi, public schools are divided into two categories — those run by the Delhi government and those by municipal corporations. While municipal corporations can only run schools up to Class V, Delhi government has no such restrictions. All municipal school students have the option to shift to Delhi government schools in Class VI. There are 568 schools under the South MCD in which around 2.50 lakh children study.

The student in the Tukhmirpur school was in Class VI and had gone to the Delhi government school for the first time on Monday when the alleged incident took place.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the matter was being politicised and that students from all religions were treated with dignity in Delhi government schools.

The debate around Muslim students being allowed to hear hijabs in educational institutions took momentum after six students of Government Women’s PU College in Udupi were stopped from entering their classroom on December 31, 2021. The issue is now being heard by a bench of the Karnataka high court led by Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi.