Waqf Bill assault on Constitution, part of BJP's strategy to damage harmony: Congress
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress Sunday termed the Waqf (Amendment) Bill an "assault" on the Constitution and alleged the proposed legislation was part of the BJP's "continuing attempts to damage" the centuries-old bonds of social harmony.
It is also part of the BJP's attempts to "demonise minority communities" by spreading propaganda and creating prejudices, the opposition party alleged.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 is "deeply flawed".
"The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 is part of the BJP's strategy and continuing attempts to damage the centuries-old bonds of social harmony in our uniquely multi-religious society," he said in a statement.
It is part of the BJP's strategy and continuing attempts "to demonise minority communities by spreading false propaganda and creating prejudices", Ramesh claimed.
He alleged that the bill is aimed at diluting Constitutional provisions that guarantee equal rights and protection to all citizens, regardless of religion.
It is part of the BJP's strategy and continuing attempts to "defame traditions and institutions of minority communities to keep our society in a state of permanent polarization for electoral gains", the Congress leader alleged.
He claimed the proposed legislation is deeply flawed for five reasons.
Ramesh alleged that all the institutions created by previous laws to administer Waqfs were actively sought to be reduced in stature, composition and authority to deliberately deprive the community the right to administer its own religious traditions and affairs.
"Deliberate ambiguity has been introduced for determining who can donate their land for waqf purposes thus altering the very definition of waqf itself," he said.
The waqf-by-user concept developed by the nation's judiciary on the basis of long, continued and uninterrupted customary usage is being abolished, Ramesh claimed.
"Provisions in the existing law are being removed without any reason just to weaken the administration of the waqf. Enhanced defences are now being introduced in the law to protect those who have encroached on waqf lands," he claimed.
Ramesh said far-reaching powers have been given to the collector and other designated state government officers on matters related to disputes concerning waqf properties as well as their registration.
Officers of the state governments will now have the powers to derecognize any waqf on anyone's complaint or on a mere allegation of the waqf property being a government property till a final decision is taken, he claimed.
"It bears recall that a 428-page report was literally bulldozed through the JPC without it ever having gone through a detailed clause-by-clause discussion. It thus violates all Parliamentary practices," Ramesh said.
"Most fundamentally, the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 is an assault on the Constitution of India itself," the Congress leader asserted.
His remarks came after the Parliament's joint committee submitted its report on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill. Though not listed yet, there is speculation that the proposed legislation could be brought for passage in Parliament during the ongoing Budget Session.
The 31-member panel on the Bill, after multiple sittings and hearings, suggested several amendments to the proposed legislation even as the opposition members disagreed with the report and submitted dissent notes.
The 655-page report was submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on January 30.
The joint committee adopted the report that contained changes suggested by members of the ruling BJP by a 15-11 majority vote. The move prompted the opposition to dub the exercise an attempt to destroy Waqf boards.
The Bill was referred to the joint committee on August 8 last year, following its introduction in the Lok Sabha by Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju.
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
