IAF officers can't grow beard on religious grounds: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Muslim Air Force personnel cannot sport a beard against service rules, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, upholding a High Court view that such a beard was not a basic tenet of the religion, although desirable.

The service rules, however, allow Sikh personnel to keep beards and long hair tied in turbans under the service rules as it was not shaving off the hair and beard was a basic tenet of their religion.

Two Air Force personnel had challenged their superior officers’ orders disallowing them from growing beards on religious grounds while in service. They were directed to shave off their beards or face disciplinary action. The rules then allowed those who already sported such beards to continue to sport them if they had joined before January 2002.

But those who did not were not allowed to change their appearance subsequently by growing one. They first moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court, lost the case and appealed to the top court. The case dates back to 2005.

In 2009, the High Court ruled that maintaining a beard was not an integral part of Islamic religion and the service rules were drawn up in such a way as to maintain discipline while accommodating “the basic interest of various religions in a secular manner”.

On Thursday, a threejudge bench, comprising Chief Justice of India T S Thakur, and Justices D Y Chandrachud and L Nageshwar Rao, upheld this view.

The court noted that though every religion was to be treated equally in a secular country, any such right could be regulated in the interest of discipline of the forces.