The Congress on Thursday said the Waqf Amendment Act is not just "legally flawed" but "morally vacuous" and that it "attacks" the very soul of the Constitution.
Addressing a press conference here, Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi said the law attacks the rights of minorities in the name of reform and the party will not allow this to happen as the framers of the Constitution had not envisioned this.
Singhvi along with Congress' minorities department head Imran Pratapgarhi welcomed the Thursday's development in the Supreme Court over the new law and thanked the top court for granting time to hear the important matter.
"I want to say this is not reform. It is retaliation in the guise of reform. Retaliation meticulously scripted, strategically timed, and constitutionally questionable. The Waqf Amendment Act is not an exercise in efficiency as it pretends to be. It is an exercise in erasure," Singhvi told reporters.
"Behind the bland language of governance lies the bold ambition of control. Religious autonomy is being reduced to state-administered protocol. And community rights are being redrawn with bureaucratic pens. This is not about improving institutions but about infiltrating, controlling, and closing them," he noted.
{{/usCountry}}"Behind the bland language of governance lies the bold ambition of control. Religious autonomy is being reduced to state-administered protocol. And community rights are being redrawn with bureaucratic pens. This is not about improving institutions but about infiltrating, controlling, and closing them," he noted.
{{/usCountry}}Singhvi said what the government is calling a reform is actually an attack on the rights of minorities.
'Waqf Act is not an administrative measure…'
"The Waqf Act is not an administrative measure, it is a fundamental ideological attack," he alleged.
Singhvi said the matter should not be treated as that of a community but of their rights which cannot be.
"We are not here to just defend one community. Don't treat it as a community specific issue. We are here to defend a constitutional principle, which is that the rights like Article 26 cannot be sacrificed at the altar of majoritarian convenience," he noted.
Singhvi, who also argued in the case before the Supreme Court, said people forget that the constitutional rights are against the majority as there would be no need for the rights otherwise.
"Today it is the Waqf, tomorrow it could be your shrine, your institution, your faith and even your voice. The Act is not just legally flawed, it is morally vacuous, it is morally vacant. It takes the soul of religious freedom and stuffs it into a file marked 'subject to approval'.
"If this can be done in the name of administrative regulation, then no freedom is safe and no institution is sacred. This is not the future that our framers envisioned and it is not the future that the Congress party will allow, subject to court orders," the Congress leader claimed.