'It's not an amendment bill, it's an annihilation bill'

The drama over the controversial Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, has not ended with the BJP-led government at the Centre tabling the report and recommendations of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) in Parliament and including the dissenting notes of Opposition MPs by way of a corrigendum.

With the government expected to press for the passage of the bill when the budget session resumes on 10 March 2025, the battle has just begun. The Bill was introduced and referred to the JPC for scrutiny on the same day (8 August 2024); the final report was presented on 30 January 2025 and tabled on 13 February.

Most Opposition MPs seem to believe that the BJP will try to manipulate the Bill’s passage into law by engineering defections and abstentions by MPs. The silver lining, they say, is that the JPC report has enough ammunition to put up a legal challenge to the Bill.

Speaking to the National Herald, DMK MP A. Raja, who was on the committee, said, “The JPC’s interactions with stakeholders and the evidence produced [by them] do not support the amendments introduced in the Bill. The documents produced and points made in the committee will help us challenge the Bill legally.”

The entire JPC proceedings, Raja said, were fraudulent as the legislation was not discussed clause by clause. “The Bill is not an amendment Bill but an annihilation Bill. It was cunningly drafted to actually repeal the existing Act and surreptitiously remove the amendments made in 1995 and 2013 to safeguard the interest of the minorities,” he added.

All eyes are now on Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar, whose outfits—the Telugu Desam Party and Janata Dal (United)—are key alliance partners in the NDA. Without their support, the Bill is unlikely to be cleared.

During the Lok Sabha polls in 2024, Naidu had pledged 4 per cent reservation for Muslims in Andhra Pradesh to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that he would not permit OBC and Dalit quotas to be given to Muslims. However, on 15 February 2025, when asked whether the TDP and JD(U) had reservations over the Bill, Union minorities affairs minister Kiren Rijiju claimed that “everybody is on board’’.

Former Rajya Sabha deputy chairman K. Rahman Khan, who headed two JPCs in 1999 and 2008 to look into the functioning of the waqf boards, also confirmed that the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) is gearing up to legally challenge the Bill. “We will fight the issue both in court and by organising protests across the country. The dissent notes expressed by the Opposition members were grudgingly and reluctantly included in the Bill only after the MPs protested,” he pointed out.

He also added that the amendment which allows a person to claim possession of land they don’t legally own, that too after 12 or 30 years, is entirely against Supreme Court orders, which held that once a property is dedicated as waqf, the land belonged to God and became non-transferrable.

JPC members from the Opposition, a minority in the committee, had moved amendments to all the 44 clauses in the Bill. Of these, 28 were specifically to seek restoration of those provisions which were in the 1995 Amendment Act.

While all 44 amendments were rejected, 32 amendments moved by members of the BJP and its allies were accepted by the chairman. Imran Masood, Congress MP from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, who was also on the JPC, said the committee’s decision to include the Opposition members’ dissent note can hardly be termed a victory.

The entire Bill is in contravention of Article 14 (equality before law), Article 15 (which prohibits discrimination based on caste, religion, race, sex or place of birth) and Article 29 (which protects the rights of minorities by safeguarding their culture and education). “I do not have any doubt that the Bill will be struck down by the courts on these very grounds,” Masood asserted.

The theatrics of redacting the dissent notes and then including them as corrigendum was, Masood believed, part of the BJP’s gameplan. The functioning of waqf boards was a state subject, which the NDA government turned into a central subject.

Mohammad Jawed, who represents Kishanganj constituency in Bihar, claimed that Opposition MPs were in touch with the 16 TDP and 12 JD(U) MPs in the Lok Sabha, explaining why they ought to vote against the Bill. With Bihar Assembly elections due later this year, supporting the Bill would lose the JD(U) the goodwill of the Muslims, the second largest religious group in the state.

***

Down south, Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamaat’s state secretary Al Ameen said his organisation has been busy creating awareness among people on the threats the Bill would pose, were it to become law. In Hyderabad, Prof. Afroz Alam from the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, balanced the criticism by adding that the Bill in itself was neither wholly bad nor good.

Certain provisions could, however, be misused by the administrative machinery, such as investing all powers in the district collectors who, as government functionaries, would be vulnerable to pressure. “It’s like being left to judge your own case, which is against the principle of justice. You cannot be a judge in your own case,’’ Alam added.

The Waqf (Amendment) Bill’s primary intent is to diminish the authority of the waqf boards by removing the waqf survey commissioners and transferring power from the state government to the central government.

The most unethical part in the said Bill, Prof. Alam said, is the inclusion of two non-Muslim persons as members of the board. This is a blatant move to undermine the nature of the Islamic tribunal. Would Hindu temple trusts or the SGPC accept non-Hindu or non-Sikh members? Directing an officer nominated by the state concerned to determine if a property is ‘waqf’ is, critics say, a perfect way to legitimise land grab.

The Bill provides that the law will not apply retrospectively, as long as the property in question is already registered. But there’s a catch here as 90 per cent of waqf properties are not registered. The proposed law omits the 1954 provision of ‘waqf by user’, which makes the future of many properties uncertain.

“You can trace personal properties up to a few generations, but tracing community properties is more difficult, as their management keeps changing over time,” said Professor Mujibur Rehman, author of Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims, in a BBC report.

While the concept of ‘waqf’ applies to movable or immovable assets donated by a follower of Islam for religious or charitable purposes, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya moved an amendment that anybody wishing to donate land must provide proof of practising Islam for at least five years. This, too, has been accepted by the JPC.

Even as the most rigorous critics admit that reform is welcome to weed out corruption—a malaise not restricted to waqf boards—others believe the government is pushing for the Bill to pass into law in order to snatch prime land, humiliate Muslims and destroy the institutions that serve the community. Assuming that the Bill will get passed in March, the Opposition must prepare its legal challenge well.