JPC report on Waqf Bill admits 82 pc stakeholders opposed it

Even as the passed the Waqf Amendment Bill in the dead of the night with 288 MPs voting in favour and 232 MPs voting against it, questions are being raised about the haste, the timing and the seriousness of the deliberations in the JPC.

Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi pointed out that till the Bill was first introduced in August, 2023, the minority affairs ministry had held four regional meetings to discuss issues affecting the minorities. However, not once was a suggestion made to amend the . Who then drafted the Bill and what was the urgency, he inquired.

If the Bill was deemed to be so important, why was it taken up towards the fag end of the budget session, MPs given scant time to read and move amendments and debated in the House at the last minute? Union law minister Kiren Rijiju claimed in his reply to the discussion that the Bill’s constitutional validity had been upheld by the courts and hence there was nothing unconstitutional about it.

For a law minister to make such an absurd claim is hard to believe because the courts can examine the validity only after the Bill is passed. He also claimed that the Bill had the support of a majority of the Muslims in the country.

Union home minister Amit Shah also claimed that while the opposition was busy protesting in the House, Muslims were celebrating outside. News agencies, especially ANI, released several videos during the debate on the Waqf Bill in which ‘burqa clad women’ were seen supporting the Bill with placards and slogans.

However, even as the Bill was being introduced in the Lok Sabha, All India Muslim Personal Law Board held a press conference at the Press Club of India and ‘rejected’ the Bill in its entirety.

Does Stakeholder Consultation matter?
➡️The Joint #Parliament Committee (JPC) on #WaqfAmendmentBill receives an overwhelming number of inputs critical of or opposed to provisions of Bill.

➡️Committee still goes ahead and upholds majority provisions of the Bill as is.… pic.twitter.com/yhrGZ9TBcg

— Maadhyam (@_maadhyam_) April 2, 2025

It planned to challenge the Bill in court and launch a country-wide protest in the weeks to come, it announced. Maulana Kalbe Jawwad, a cleric, took a jibe and wondered if the ‘burqa-clad women’ in the videos were actually Muslims.

The JPC report itself exposes the government’s claim of widespread support for the Bill. A twitter handle @Maadhyam on X, dedicated to keeping a watch on parliamentary proceedings, manually examined the JPC report and came up with startling facts. Although the 92.28 lakh inputs allegedly examined by the JPC are not in the public domain, it noted that the JPC report itself provides a summary of 753 memoranda submitted to the committee. A staggering 82 per cent of them actually opposed the Bill on various counts.

The report itself claimed that 102 of the 753 memoranda supported the amendments while 516 of them were critical or opposed to them. Despite an overwhelming number of inputs opposing the amendments, as many as 28 amendments, which included the title proposed by the government, were adopted as it is by the JPC. The committee rejected just one amendment out of the 44 on the table, proposing minor modifications to 15 of them. 

The clause by clause voting details provided in annexure 1 of the JPC report, it records that 57 amendments were put to vote but as many as 43, all proposed by the opposition members in the committee, were voted out and negatived.

All the 14 amendments suggested by NDA members were adopted. The margins were identical. 16 JPC members present went along with the government and all 10 opposition members present and voting went against it.

What kind of consultations were conducted and did the JPC truly take into account the objections raised by stakeholders? The JPC exercise does appear to have been a bit farcical and AIMPLB confirmed that none of its objections raised in meetings with the JPC were taken on board.