The Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill held its marathon first meeting Thursday amid objections by opposition MPs over a host of provisions as the Union minority affairs ministry made a presentation in the proposed law.
Sources said BJP members in the meeting lauded the proposed amendments, including the provisions which seek to empower women.
There were occasional heated exchanges during the meeting but members from various parties sat for several hours, recording their views on the provisions of the Bill, offering suggestions and seeking clarifications.
In his brief comments to reporters, Committee Chairperson Jagdambika Pal described the meeting, which went on for over six hours with a lunch break, as “fruitful”.
It was one of the longest meetings held by a parliamentary panel in recent times, a member claimed.
The next meeting will be held on August 30, and the panel is likely to hear views of various state Waqf bodies, sources said.
There was a view among the members across various parties, some of them said, that the minority affairs ministry was not “adequately prepared” to address the queries raised in the meeting, and the presentation made was not up to scratch.
BJP ally Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) said the Muslim community’s concerns should be addressed and called for wider consultations, they said, adding that the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) also pitched for holding broad deliberations.
The members who attended the meeting included the BJP’s Sanjay Jaiswal, Aparajita Sarangi, Tejasvi Surya, Dilip Saikia and Gulam Ali; Congress party’s Gourav Gogoi and Naseer Hussain; TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee, YSR Congress’ V Vijaysai Reddy, AAP’s Sanjay Singh, AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, A Raja of the DMK, LJP’s Arun Bharti and TDP’s Lavu Srikrishna Devarayalu.
Several opposition members questioned various clauses of the bill and their rationale, including the move to empower district collectors in deciding on the ownership of a disputed property, and to have non-Muslim members on Waqf boards.
Later in a post on X, Reddy said he opposed the bill due to concerns expressed by various stakeholders. The bill is not acceptable in its current form, he said.
