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Centre announces 21-member joint parliamentary panel on Waqf bill
The Waqf Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha on Thursday and referred to a joint parliamentary panel after several opposition members expressed concerns.
A day after the Centre proposed sending the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 to a joint parliamentary committee, the Lok Sabha on Friday adopted a motion naming 21 members to the committee to review the Bill.
The committee will also include 10 members from the Rajya Sabha and is required to submit its report by the end of the first week of the next Parliament session.
The members include Jagdambika Pal, Nishikant Dubey, Tesjasvi Surya, Aparajita Sarangi, Sanjay Jaiswal, Dilip Saikia, Abhijit Gangopadhyay, DK Aruna, Gaurav Gogoi, Imran Masood, Mohammad Jawed, Mohibbullah, Kalyan Banerjee, A Raja, Lavu Krishna Devarayalu, Dileshwar Kamait, Arvind Sawant, Mahtre Balya Mama Suresh Gopinath, Naresh Ganpat Mhaske, Arun Bharti and Asaduddin Owaisi.
The motion was moved by parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju.
The Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha on Thursday and referred to a joint parliamentary panel after several opposition members expressed concerns about the bill’s potential impact on the federal structure and its perceived encroachment on religious autonomy.
While Congress MP KC Venugopal described it as an “attack on the federal system,” AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi claimed that the bill violates Articles 14, 15, and 25 of the Constitution.
NCP (SCP) MP Supriya Sule called for the bill to be either withdrawn or sent to a standing committee for further review. Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) MP NK Premachandran warned that the bill could be struck down if subjected to judicial scrutiny.
However, Rijiju had argued that the Waqf Bill been renamed the “United Waqf Act Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development Act,” or “UMEED” for short. He said that the Bill does not infringe upon religious freedoms, as enshrined in Articles 25 to 30 of the Indian Constitution, saying the Supreme Court has ruled that Waqf Boards do not fall under the purview of these articles, which safeguard religious practices.
The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, aims to address several issues related to the powers of State Waqf Boards, the registration and survey of Waqf properties, and the removal of encroachments. It also proposes the repeal of the Mussalman Wakf Act, 1923, and seeks to rename the existing Waqf Act, 1995, to the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act, 1995.
