“Children who do not follow the ‘do choti’ hairstyle are being subjected to corporal punishment… It is only beating and no teaching,” said lawyer Ashok Agarwal, who submitted a petition seeking action against authorities of Sarvoday Kanya Vidyalaya (SKV), a Delhi government school in Madanpur Khadar in south-east Delhi.
The court ordered the secretary of Delhi education department to look into the allegations and conduct an inquiry through a senior officer of the directorate of education and file a report by May 1.
The bench passed the order after going through a preliminary report submitted by the principal of another government school on the allegations against SKV.
The report mentioned that the SKV principal, teachers and some parents denied the allegations, but some students had complained and these need to be looked into.
The report also noted that the SKV principal and teachers insisted that no hairstyle had been forced on the students, instead a parent teacher association (PTA) had merely suggested the need to maintain a uniformity in hairstyle for the “safety of their own children”.