The parliamentary meeting about the Waqf Amendment Bill turned chaotic on Friday when all the opposition members were suspended for the day. They were protesting against Committee Chairman Jagdambika Pal, saying he wasn’t letting them speak properly. The suspended members include Kalyan Banerjee, Mohammad Jawed, A Raja, Asaduddin Owaisi, Naseer Hussain, Mohibullah, Mohamed Abdullah, Arvind Sawant, Nadeem-ul Haque, and Imran Masood.
BJP member Nishikant Dubey suggested the suspension, and it was agreed upon by the committee. Another BJP member, Aparajita Sarangi, said the opposition members were behaving poorly and using bad language against Pal. The meeting started with a lot of arguing, as the opposition claimed they didn’t get enough time to review the bill properly.
Before calling in Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the religious leader of Kashmir, the committee members discussed among themselves. The opposition leaders accused the BJP of rushing the bill for political gain ahead of the Delhi elections. The argument got so heated that the meeting had to be briefly paused.
After the break, the Mirwaiz-led group spoke to the committee. Kalyan Banerjee and Naseer Hussain from the opposition left the meeting and told reporters it had become a joke. They asked to postpone a meeting planned for January 27 to look at the bill’s details, suggesting new dates of January 30 or 31.
The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, was sent to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on August 8, 2024, after being introduced in the Lok Sabha by Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju. This bill aims to improve the Waqf Act of 1995 to better manage waqf properties.
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