The child welfare committee of the Karnataka government has disciplined seven Kannada news channels for allegedly violating child rights by chasing and surrounding schoolgirls in hijab with microphones and cameras for sound bites.
There have been instances of a gaggle of reporters shoving their mikes into the faces of girls outside schools and colleges and asking them what they would choose, education or the hijab.
One video clip shared widely on social media shows a cameraperson chasing a little girl wearing a hijab. As the petrified child runs towards her school in Shimoga, the man overtakes her and aims a cellphone camera at her. An unidentified person had filmed the incident.
The child welfare committee decided not to take action against the channels although it cited violation of Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act while summoning representatives of the channels for a briefing at its office in Shimoga on Friday.
“We only wanted to give them some information regarding child rights. No cases are being booked,” CWC chairperson Rekha G.M. told The Telegraph on Saturday.
While the section cited in the letter of summons sent to the channels deals with cruelty to children, the chairperson said the committee did not want to be seen violating media freedom. “We don’t want to violate media freedom (by booking any case against the channels),” she said.
“They (the representatives of the channels) said they had a larger social responsibility to cover news. But we have told them they should not disclose the identity or harass children,” Rekha said.
The committee took suo motu cognisance of the matter after several news channels aggressively pursued minor girls, many of whom were chased and surrounded by reporters and camerapersons, for sound bites.
“We took the initiative to summon the channels as part of our larger responsibility, although neither the children nor their parents had complained to us,” Rekha said.
Advocate Poorna Ravishankar, who has been working on child rights, noted that the legal framework is a “bit sketchy” when it comes to addressing such issues.
“The legal framework is a bit sketchy when it comes to filming a minor without consent and where there’s no sexual intent involved. There’s a lack of child-centric laws on this matter,” she told this newspaper.
Poorna, however, saw the CWC initiative as a welcome move. “It is a good start at least, because silence of institutions such as the CWC and the minorities commission has been extremely unsettling. It is almost like all institutions are quiet when it comes to Muslims, and Muslim girls in particular,” she said.
Schools and colleges have been citing an interim order passed by Karnataka High Court to deny permission to hijab-clad students to attend classes. But the court had directed only those institutions with prescribed uniforms to restrain students from wearing any religious clothing, including the hijab and the saffron scarves that Hindu students have been wearing in their counter-protest, till it settled the matter.
The court is hearing a batch of petitions seeking that the fundamental right to wear the hijab be upheld. When the matter was taken up before a three-judge bench on Friday, advocate Mohammed Tahir appearing on behalf of one of the petitioners sought clarity from the government since even hijab-wearing teachers have not been spared in many schools and colleges.
He informed the court that the minority welfare department had on Thursday issued an order restraining students from wearing the hijab even in Urdu schools where almost all students are Muslims.
While the bench headed by Chief Justice Rithu Raj Awasthi maintained that the court was clear in its order, advocate-general Prabhuling K. Navadgi sought a written complaint from advocate Tahir and assured that suitable instructions would be given to all educational institutions to abide by the court’s interim order.
