BHU hostel timings ensure girls’ safety: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court said on Thursday that there was nothing wrong with the BHU rules hemming in girl students in its hostels, insisting that these were for their own safety, and asked them to approach the varsity authorities if they had any grievance against any rule.

“Everything cannot be said in court. These rules are for the safety of the girls,” a two-judge bench, comprising Justices Arun Misra and Mohan M Shatanagouder, said, disposing of the plea of students against the rules. “Even I could not get into my daughter’s hostel,” Justice Misra said. “It is for their own safety,” he said, referring to the rule which does not allow them to stay outside their campuses beyond 8 pm.

Unlike the boys, parents of girls are not allowed to enter the hostel too under the rules, neither are they allowed to stay out late or use their mobiles late.


Fathers can stay over in the boy’s hostels overnight, but mothers are not extended the same benefit in the girls’ hostels.

Girls are not served non-vegetarian food unlike in the boys’ hostels. The discriminatory nature of these rules had sparked off campus unrest. The case of students who moved the top court against this are being represented by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan who argued that the rules were prima facie discriminatory.

He cited some examples of the rules as “draconian”. One, he said, mandates girls to wear “decent clothes”. “What is decent?” Bhushan asked.