The Supreme Court on Friday partly stayed a Mumbai college’s decision to ban the wearing of hijabs, burqas and niqabs on its campus, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and PV Sanjay Kumar was hearing a petition challenging the Bombay High Court’s June verdict that had upheld the ban imposed by the educational institution.

The court issued notice on the plea and questioned why such instructions had been issued. It said that students should be allowed to wear what they want to, Bar and Bench reported.

Such a ban would work against empowering women, the court said.

“How are you empowering women by telling them what to wear?” Kumar was quoted as having observed. “Less said the better. Where is the choice for the woman? You have suddenly woken up to the fact that they are wearing it. It is unfortunate that these all being said after so many years of independence and you say religion is there in this country.”

Reacting to the college’s argument that it did not want the religion of the student to be revealed, Kumar said: “Will their names not reveal religion? Will you ask them to be identified by numbers?”

The bench also asked whether a student with a tilak or a bindi would be restrained from entering the college. “That is not part of the instruction at all. You have not said that,” it told the counsel representing the college.

The counsel for the college also submitted that the objection against the ban was raised by a few Muslim students, adding that 441 others students from the community were “happily attending” classes.

“Will it not be up to the girl what she wants to wear?” Kumar said in response.

Khanna added that the authorities should understand the background that their students come from. “Family members may say wear it and go and they have to wear,” he said. “Don’t ask them to leave the college…Solution to a lot of this is proper, good education.”

However, the court agreed that veils that cover the face cannot be allowed inside classrooms. It decided not to interfere with that part of the college’s instructions, Live Law reported.

“We issue notice in the week commencing November 18,” the bench said in its order. “We partly stay clause 2 of the impugned circular to the extent that it directs that no hijab, no cap, no badges will be allowed. We hope and trust this interim order is not misused by anybody,” it added.

On June 26, a division bench of the High Court said that it was not inclined to interfere in the decision taken by NG Acharya and DK Marathe College of Arts, Science and Commerce.

The college’s directive had been challenged by nine female students on the grounds that it violated their fundamental right to privacy and choice.

The students are in their second and third year of a science degree course at the college, which is run by the Chembur Trombay Education Society. They had approached the High Court challenging the college’s decision on June 14.

The petitioners said that the move also violated their right to practise their religion. They called the ban “arbitrary, unreasonable, bad-in-law and perverse”.

The students also argued that they had been wearing the niqab and hijab for several years, inside and outside the college.

Also read: What the opposition to the hijab says about Indian secularism and the sidelining of Muslim identity