Waqf JPC approves, sets 4pm deadline for Opposition to give dissent notes
JPC chairman Jagdambika Pal said the report on teh Waqf Amendment Bill would be submitted to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla on Thursday
NEW DELHI: The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Waqf Amendment Bill adopted its report and the amended version of the bill by a majority vote on Wednesday and told the opposition members, who disagreed with the report, to file their dissent note by 4pm.
JPC chairman Jagdambika Pal said the report would be submitted to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla on Thursday and it was for him and Parliament to decide the next course of action. He also claimed that many amendments approved by the committee have addressed several concerns of opposition members as well, adding the Bill once enacted will help Waqf board in discharging its duties transparently and more effectively,
Rajya Sabha member M Mohamed Abdulla of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) accused the commthe draft report was circulated among the JPC members late on Tuesday and the first deadline to submit dissent notes was 10am. It was extended to 4pm after several members questioned the rush.
In their dissent note, Trinamool Congress MPs Kalyan Banerjee and Nadimul Haque complained that the draft report did not take into account representations from stakeholders, depositions of witnesses, or submissions by opposition members.
“While making the Observations and/or Recommendations, not a single stakeholder’s representations, contents of the representations, depositions of the Witnesses, submissions made by the Opposition Members including us, was taken into consideration and/or dealt with,” they said. HT has reviewed the 32-page document.
It described the proceedings of the committee as an “eyewash” and said the report did not give its reasoning for taking a particular stand.
“The majority members of the committee do not disclose why the views of the stakeholders, evidences of the witnesses, submissions of the Opposition members in JPC did not appeal to… the majority committee members,” it said, accusing the majority of mostly backing the government’s version.
Congress MP Imran Masood said there was a 15-minute general discussion, not a clause-by-clause discussion. “That is the least one could expect from a fair and democratic JPC procedure,” he said, alleging that the panel had conducted its proceedings unfairly from the first day after its constitution.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sanjay Jaiswal rejected the criticism, saying the proceedings were “peaceful” and that members had “deliberated and discussed peacefully.” Jaiswal also said, “There was no ruckus or opposition to the report, but the members have been given time to submit dissent notes.”
The bill, introduced by the government in the previous session, seeks to bring changes to the powers of state waqf boards, survey of waqf properties and removal of encroachments by amending the Waqf Act, 1995.
A waqf is a Muslim religious endowment, usually in the form of landed property, made for purposes of charity and community welfare.
The bill proposes sweeping changes in the regulation and governance of India’s waqf boards, that manage Islamic charitable endowments. It reworks the definition of waqf to ensure that only lawful property owners practising Islam for at least five years can create waqf through formal deeds. The role of surveying waqf properties, handled by survey commissioners under the 1995 Act, is now to be entrusted to district collectors or officers of equivalent rank. The most controversial provision is a proposal to induct non-Muslims in the central waqf council, state waqf boards and waqf tribunals, calling for such bodies to become “more broad-based”, with representation of Shia, Sunni, Bohra, Agakhani, and other Muslim sects, along with non-Muslims.
The government argues the bill modernises norms and brings in uniformity but the Opposition has called it an attempt to infringe on religious rights and the Constitution.
