Waqf Bill: 572 amendments suggested in the Waqf Bill amid tussle between government and opposition; Clause-wise discussion in JPC meeting

The government and the opposition are face to face over the Waqf Amendment Bill. Meanwhile, members of the Parliamentary Committee on the Waqf Amendment Bill have suggested 572 amendments to the draft bill. As the committee meetings reached the final stage, a consolidated list of amendments was released by the Joint Committee on the Waqf Amendment Bill headed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jagdambika Pal late on Sunday night. The committee will discuss the amendments clause-wise in its meeting today. Members of the BJP and the opposition have introduced amendments to the bill. However, the list of members introducing amendments does not include the names of any of the BJP's allies.

The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 8 by Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju. It was then referred to the Joint Committee of Parliament. The bill aims to amend the Waqf Act, of 1995 so that the problems and challenges in the regulation and management of waqf property can be addressed.

Earlier, there was a lot of uproar in the meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on the Waqf Amendment Bill on Friday. Seeing the uproar not stopping, 10 MPs of the committee were suspended from the membership of the committee for the whole day. During the meeting, opposition members claimed that they were not being given enough time to study the proposed changes in the draft law. On this day, the JPC headed by BJP MP Jagdambika Pal was to hear the views of the delegation led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq of Kashmir.

10 opposition MPs were suspended for the whole day

After the uproar in the meeting, all 10 opposition MPs were suspended for the day from the meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Waqf Amendment Bill 2024. The suspended opposition MPs included Kalyan Banerjee, Mohammad Javed, A Raja, Asaduddin Owaisi, Nasir Hussain, Mohibullah, M Abdullah, Arvind Sawant, Nadeemul Haque, Imran Masood.

What did JPC Chairman Jagdambika Pal say?

Regarding the meeting, the chairman of the committee, Jagdambika Pal, had said that two important delegations had come as witnesses on Friday. One delegation was from Jammu and Kashmir led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. The second delegation was of Lawyers for Justice, which included lawyers from the High Court and Supreme Court. They gave a good presentation. They have done detailed research work, which will also be useful for our report.

He had said that even though it is not in our jurisdiction, our members told the Ministry of Minority Affairs that this should be taken care of, I am sad that today's meeting was so important, but the way Kalyan Banerjee unnecessarily created a ruckus in the meeting, tried to argue by entering the well and also abused, I think he crossed all limits today and broke all the limits.

He had said that I thought the whole country, the whole world was watching this... he did not want us to even listen to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and all our members were hurt by this. We postponed the meeting twice, but they had made up their mind not to let the meeting happen today... After this Nishikant Dubey put forward a proposal and some members had to be sent out, despite being JPC members, they gave statements outside.