Congress’s Kaneez Fatima defeated BJP’s Chandrakant B Patil to win the Karnataka Assembly elections from the Gulbarga North constituency. Kaneez is the lone Muslim woman in the Karnataka Assembly and her win comes a year after she led the protest against the BJP’s decision to enforce a ban on students wearing hijab in classrooms. She was one of the few Congress leaders to protest against the hijab ban. The Congress candidate defeated her BJP rival by a margin of 2,712 votes.
Kaneez Fatima had also emerged victorious in the 2018 state elections in the Muslim-dominated constituency of Gulbarga North, similarly defeating Chandrakant Patil with a 43.29% vote share and a margin of 5,940 votes.
Kaneez was one of eight Muslim candidates picked by the Congress to contest the Assembly elections. In February last year, Fatima had gathered outside the District Collector’s office in Kalaburagi to stage a protest against the Karnataka government’s decision to restrict the wearing of hijab in classrooms in the state. The state Education Department had ordered that all schools under it had to adhere to the dress code – that clothes which disturb equality, integrity, and public order will be banned.
Kaneez protested against the ban saying that the girls were being oppressed and denied their right to education. Claiming that the BJP was trying to rake up communal tensions, she led a group of students who protested against the hijab ban. She had challenged the state government to stop her from wearing a hijab to the Assembly.
Before that, in December 2019, Kaneez had protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) alongside Chittapur MLA Priyank Kharge in Kalaburagi town.