Waqf amendment bill: Lok Sabha adopts motion naming 21 members for Joint Parliamentary Panel,10 MPs from Rajya Sabha included

New Delhi: A Joint Parliamentary Committee with 31 members was formed on Friday, the last day of the Budget session, to look into the controversial Waqf Board amendment bill. Union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju announced the Committee’s members in both the Houses.

In the Lok Sabha, the members of the Committee include BJP MPs Jagdambika Pal, Nishikant Dubey and Dilip Saikia, as well as I.N.D.I.A. bloc leaders Gaurav Gogoi (INC), Kalyan Banerjee (TMC), and A Raja (DMK) in addition to AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi from the Lok Sabha. From the Rajya Sabha, the committee has as members BJP’s Radha Mohan Das Agrawal and Gulam Ali, besides Congress’s Syed Naseer Hussain, YSRCP’s Y Vijayasai Reddy, and AAP’s Sanjay Singh.

At the introduction of the Bill on Thursday in the Lok Sabha, several Opposition members opposed it and asked the government to send the legislation to wider consultation. Rijiju, while introducing the Bill, said that the Waqf Boards were captured by the mafia.

The BJP’s allies, too, felt that the bill should be scrutinised. While the allies supported the Bill in the Parliament, behind the scenes they urged the government to not push through the legislation without wider discussion. The Lok Janshakti Party was the only BJP ally that asked for the Bill to be sent to a committee, while the JDU wanted the legislation to be implemented.

The Indian Union Muslim League, which has four Parliamentarians – three in the Lok Sabha and one in the Rajya Sabha, complained that it did not find any representation in the Committee. The party’s Lok Sabha MP ET Mohammed Basheer met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to lodge a complaint and also wrote to the prime minister.

The Bill, however, has found support from a section of Muslims – a delegation of All India Sufi Sajjadanashin Council (AISSC) met Rijiju on Tuesday to offer support to the Bill. On Friday, they went to the Parliament to thank him for introducing the bill.

The legislation – United Waqf Act Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development (UMEED) Act, 1995 – which seeks to amend the 1995 Waqf Act proposes to take away the power of any Waqf Board to declare any property as a ‘Waqf property’ by repealing Section 50 of the existing legislation. Waqf properties will need to be registered on a portal and go through the stated procedure for mutation as per revenue laws before any property is recorded as waqf property as per the proposed legislation.

The 21 members from the Lok Sabha included in the panel are:

1. Jagdambika Pal

2. Nishikant Dubey

3. Tejasvi Surya

4. Aparajita Sarangi

5. Sanjay Jaiswal

6. Dilip Saikia

7. Abhijit Gangopadhyay

8. Aruna D.K

9. Gaurav Gogoi

10. Imran Masood

11. Mohammad Jawed

12. Mohibbullah Nadvi

13. Kalyan Banerjee

14. Andimuthu Raja

15. Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu

16. Dileshwar Kamait

17. Arvind Sawant

18. Suresh Mhatre

19. Naresh Mhaske

20. Arun Bharti

21. Asaduddin Owaisi

The 10 Rajya Sabha members are: -

1. Brij Lal

2. Medha Vishram Kulkarni

3. Gulam Ali Khatana

4. Radha Mohan Das Agarwal

5. Syed Naseer Hussain

6. Nadimul Haque

7. V. Vijaysai Reddy

8. M. M. Abdulla

9. Sanjay Singh

10. D. Veerendra Heggade