Opposition MPs write to Birla against Waqf JPC chief

At least seven Opposition lawmakers on Monday threatened to disassociate themselves from the joint parliamentary committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill.

At least seven Opposition lawmakers on Monday threatened to disassociate themselves from the joint parliamentary committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill and urged Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to “direct” the panel chairperson Jagdambika Pal to ensure a consensual decision-making and free and fair working.

The Opposition said the speed of the proceedings left little time for members to prepare. (PTI)

Some members said the Opposition is wary of the speed with which meetings are being convened, leaving little time to the members for preparation. They also alleged that they have been “stonewalled” during the panel’s proceedings.

“We the members of the JPC from the Opposition feel that the constitution of JPC — a mini Parliament — should not be treated as a mere ventilating chamber to get the bill passed as desired by the government ignoring the Parliamentary process by using the so called ‘majority’ undemocratically,” the Opposition’s letter to Birla said.

“Hence, it is our duty to bring to your notice with pain that bulldozing the proceedings of the JPC without assigning reasonable and plausible time pause as against the will of the members is nothing but an act of atrocious onslaught on the Constitutional religion and Parliament,” it added.

The Opposition members accused panel chief Pal, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker, of taking “unilateral decisions on fixing the dates of sittings even for consecutive three days, where Persons/Bodies to be called as witness, which is not practically possible for MPs to interact with preparation.”

“It is therefore prayed that the Chairman of the JPC may kindly be directed to have a formal consultation with members of the committee before taking decisions on these issues to assure the nation that the Committee is fair and free in arriving at conclusions on the Bill without any bias and departure from the well-established Parliamentary procedures. Otherwise, we humbly submit that we may be forced to disassociate with JPC once for all as we have been stone-walled,” the letter said.

The letter has been signed by seven lawmakers — AAP’s Sanjay Singh, DMK leaders A Raja and MM Abdulla, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, Trinamool Congress’s Kalyan Banerjee and Nadimul Haque, and Congress MP Md Jawed.

To be sure, Opposition members withdrawing en masse from a joint panel is a rare occurrence in the history of Parliament. One such incident was reported in the JPC on the 1992 stock market scam.

The signs of a widening rift in the JPC come ahead of the upcoming winter session of Parliament when the panel is likely to submit its report on the bill. A senior official said the government is keen to push the bill for passage at the earliest but has to wait for the panel’s report.

“Since it’s a JPC, we will have to thoroughly examine the report and try to accept as many suggestions as possible,” a senior government functionary said, requesting anonymity.

Pal has rejected the charge, asserting he ensured everybody was heard. “When the resolution for the Joint Parliamentary Committee was brought by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, he said that he wanted to refer it to the JPC so that we could call more and more stakeholders, intellectuals, Islamic scholars, former judges, lawyers of the Supreme Court and high court, minority organisations,” Pal was quoted as saying by ANI.

On Monday, the committee called representatives of Jamaat-e-Islam-e-Hind, Delhi to record their oral evidence on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024. It also called a group of Muslim women intellectuals led by Shalini Ali to record their views and suggestions. This was the first time the committee called any group of women.