LONDON : In a scaling-up of the row between Frances tiny Sikh minority and its controversial new law to ban the turban, hijab and yarmulke and protect the secular state, the community is to sue President Chirac government.

The decision, announced from Paris by Kudrat Singh, director of global campaign organisation United Sikhs, comes after 17 Sikh schoolchildren were excluded from several French government-funded schools.

Singh said Frances tiny, estimated 10,000 Sikh community had faith that the French judicial system would make France meet her obligations to provide school children the right to practise their religion under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

The Sikh decision to sue comes exactly a week on Wednesday from the enforcement of the 10-month-old law banning conspicuous religious symbols from government schools.