The amendments to a 1995 regulation governing waqf endowments would add non-Muslims to boards that handle such properties.
India’s primary opposition occasion says it should problem a just lately handed invoice that overhauls legal guidelines governing Muslim spiritual endowments within the nation’s Supreme Courtroom.
The waqf modification invoice, hailed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “main milestone for reform and transparency”, was handed by the parliament’s higher home early on Friday, a day after it was authorised by the decrease home.
The amendments to a 1995 regulation governing Muslim endowments would add non-Muslims to boards that handle such properties and provides the federal government a bigger function in validating their land holdings.
Waqf refers to non-public property – moveable or immovable – that’s completely donated by Muslims for spiritual or charitable functions. Waqf properties can’t be offered or transferred.
The federal government says the adjustments to the legal guidelines governing waqf properties will assist struggle corruption and mismanagement whereas selling variety, however critics concern that they’ll additional undermine the rights of the nation’s Muslim minority and might be used to confiscate historic mosques and different properties.
Two days of intense debates in parliament over the invoice noticed the Congress occasion condemning it as “unconstitutional”, with occasion chief Sonia Gandhi calling it “a brazen assault on the structure”.
“It is rather a lot a part of the BJP’s deliberate technique to hold our society in a state of everlasting polarisation,” she mentioned, referring to Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Social gathering.
On Friday, Congress chief Jairam Ramesh mentioned the occasion “will very quickly be difficult within the Supreme Courtroom the constitutionality of the Waqf (Modification) Invoice, 2024“, because the proposal known as.
“We’re assured and can proceed to withstand all assaults of the Modi authorities on the ideas, provisions, and practices which are contained within the Structure of India,” Ramesh posted on X.
One of the vital controversial adjustments to the waqf invoice is in its possession guidelines, which might have an effect on a whole lot of mosques, shrines and graveyards. Many such properties lack formal documentation as they have been donated with out authorized data a long time, even centuries, in the past.
Residence Minister Amit Shah, an in depth Modi aide, mentioned the adjustments will assist “catch the individuals who lease out properties” for particular person positive factors.
“That cash, which might be used to assist the event of minorities, is being stolen,” he mentioned.
However Communist Social gathering of India (Marxist) chief Subhashini Ali accused the federal government of utilizing the invoice to polarise voters earlier than state elections in Bihar, a key northern Indian state the BJP is but to manipulate immediately.
Tamil Nadu state’s Chief Minister M Okay Stalin mentioned his occasion additionally plans to problem the laws within the Supreme Courtroom. Legislators within the state meeting earlier handed a decision opposing the amendments.
“The Waqf Invoice tells each Indian Muslim: ‘You aren’t an equal citizen of India, know your house, your rights aren’t the identical as ours,’” Mahua Moitra, a legislator from the opposition All India Trinamool Congress, posted on X. “By no means felt so unhappy, so ashamed.”
The laws has drawn sturdy condemnation from Muslim teams. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind referred to as it “a direct assault on spiritual freedom and constitutional rights”.
“The passage is extremely condemnable,” the group’s president, Syed Sadatullah Husaini, mentioned in a press release, accusing the federal government of undermining the rights of minority communities.
The All India Muslim Private Legislation Board, one other distinguished neighborhood organisation, mentioned such feedback have been in opposition to the basics of Islamic endowments as such our bodies essentially must be ruled by Muslims solely.
The board mentioned the invoice was “a blatant infringement on the constitutional rights of Muslim residents” and referred to as on them to rise in protest in opposition to it.
