Chandigarh(PTI): Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is lodged in Sunaria jail in Haryana's Rohtak district, was granted a three-week furlough on Monday, officials said.

Singh has been granted a 21-day furlough by the state's jail administration.

Last year too, the Dera chief had been given emergency parole from sunrise to sunset to meet his ailing mother. He had also come out of jail on a couple of occasions on health grounds.

Singh, 54, is serving a 20-year jail term for raping two of his women disciples in his 'ashram' in Sirsa.He was convicted in August 2017 by a special CBI court in Panchkula.

The Sirsa headquartered Dera has a large number of followers in poll-bound states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.