Waqf JPC meeting chaos: BJP's Jagdambika Pal claims ‘Kalyan Banerjee abused me’

The parliamentary committee meeting began on a contentious note, with opposition members arguing they were not given enough time to review draft legislation.

After opposition members were suspended from the Waqf Bill panel on Friday, joint parliamentary committee chairman Jagdambika Pal said that the House was adjourned due to TMC's Kalyan Banerjee using unparliamentary language against him.

Jagdambika Pal Member of Parliament and Chairman, JPC on Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 (Deepak Gupta/Hindustan Times))

“Twice we had to adjourn the House. Today, we gave time to the Mirwaiz Umar Farooq delegation from Jammu and Kashmir, which was a demand from the opposition... For the first time, we saw Owaisi sahab, who usually does not participate in bills in Parliament, also getting involved in the bill. And the way Kalyan Banerjee used unparliamentary words and abused me, I feel it was done deliberately,” Jagdambika Pal told ANI.

“I kept requesting him, but he was ready for a commotion, and Nishikant Dubey proposed that he along with others be suspended,” Pal added.

The members who were suspended include Kalyan Banerjee, Mohammad Jawed, A Raja, Asaduddin Owaisi, Naseer Hussain, Mohibullah, Mohamed Abdullah, Arvind Sawant, Nadeem-ul Haque and Imran Masood.

The parliamentary committee meeting began on a contentious note, with opposition members arguing they were not given enough time to review the proposed changes to the draft legislation.

Congress MP Imran Masood, commenting on his suspension from the Waqf panel criticised the committee's actions, claiming they were rushing to take control of Waqf properties.

He said that despite agreeing to a meeting on January 25-26, it was postponed to January 27, adding that the committee was acting arbitrarily and not taking the matter seriously.

“They are doing everything in a hurry, and from the very first day, it looked like they want to grab the Waqf properties. We had agreed to a meeting on Jnauary 25 and 26, but now they have postponed it to 27. They are working arbitrarily. They are not at all serious; they just want to crush the Waqf properties. We all wanted the meeting, which was scheduled for 27th January, to be postponed to 31st January. The situation in the JPC is not very good,” Imran Masood told ANI.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Mutahida Majlis-E-Ulema, spoke on behalf of a delegation of Ulemas from Jammu and Kashmir, Leh and Kargil at the JPC meeting on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024.

He expressed strong opposition to the proposed amendments, saying that they were unacceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and were aimed at disempowering the Muslim community.

“The proposed amendments to the Waqf Act are not in the interests of the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir . This is an attempt to disempower the community and we were hoping the delegation would visit Kashmir to understand the real concerns of the people before moving forward with the bill,” said Mirwaiz.