Do Congress and other opposition parties want to walk out of the Joint Parliamentary Committee or JPC formed to consider the Waqf Board Bill? This is a big question because the kind of behavior of the opposition regarding JPC meetings is not positive. An informed BJP leader says that somehow now the opposition MPs want to get rid of it. They feel that if they stay till the end and JPC recommends changes in the Waqf Board Bill, then it will become difficult for these parties to answer to their Muslim vote bank. The blame will fall on him that such recommendations were made in his presence. However, this is far-fetched because everyone knows that whatever recommendation the JPC will make on the bill brought by the government will not be by consensus. Opposition parties will not agree to any change in the situation. In the end, it is possible that there will be a voting process, in which the opposition MPs will vote against the changes. After that they will oppose it inside the Parliament also.
But before that, the opposition’s view regarding the meetings is also no less interesting. Even if the opposition parties do not want to leave the JPC, it is clearly visible that they are trying to tarnish its credibility even before the recommendations of the committee. That’s why there is ruckus in every meeting of GPC. Mamata Banerjee’s MP Kalyan Banerjee broke a water bottle in the committee and threw it on the Speaker and injured himself. Through this, Trinamool Congress gave the message that something serious is happening against Muslims in JPC, which only it is trying to stop. The opposition has made it a routine to walk out from every meeting.
The issue of leaving JPC or tarnishing its credibility arose from the statements of members of opposition parties. Opposition MPs themselves said that they may leave the JPC. Committee chairperson Jagdambika Pal complained to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. Opposition MPs met him and later also wrote letters to him. The opposition accused the committee chairman of discriminating and taking decisions arbitrarily. Informed sources say that the opposition MPs are worried because they had not thought about which people from different states and Muslim groups could be called and what they could say.
When people came and exposed the wrongdoings of the Waqf Board, the opposition felt that the game might turn upside down. Then he started walking out of its meetings and threatened to boycott it. Not only this, when a study tour was announced by the chairman of the committee to finalize the report before the winter session of Parliament so that the committee members could see some things with their own eyes, the opposition MPs boycotted it. The study tour was announced to start from Saturday but no opposition MP is participating in it.