New Delhi: The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025 is a targeted legislation that aims to designate Muslims as “second class citizens”, Congress MP Dr Syed Naseer Hussain said in the Rajya Sabha Thursday, adding that the proposed amendments are against the Constitution and violate several fundamental rights.
The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha late Wednesday after nearly 12 hours of debate, by a 288-232 vote. It was then introduced in the Rajya Sabha Thursday by Union minority affairs minister Kiren Rijiju.
Hussain said these amendments violate “equality before law, parity before law for all sections of people”.
Referring to a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), he even challenged the government to bring in one law for the governance and administration of all the religious activity centers in the country. “Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Zoroastrians, everybody should have the same law. Why are they scared of making such a law?” he asked.
Defending waqf properties, he pointed out that there are similar institutions for other religions like endowments, Hindu religious places acts, councils and corporations for Christians and other bodies for all religions.
He claimed that the biggest misinformation against waqf is that the waqf board can declare any land as its own. “Is there no law in India? Are there no revenue rules or property rules?” he asked.
Hussain also pointed out that waqf cases can be brought before a tribunal and appealed in courts. However, in response, Home Minister Amit Shah pointed out that there is no provision to file appeals against tribunal decisions in court, and that matters can be raised in the high court through writs.
“So there is a 99 percent chance of the decision of the tribunal being final,” Shah said, accusing Hussain of misleading people.
Hussain went on to object to the provision that individuals must show or demonstrate that they have been practicing Islam for at least five years to establish a waqf.
“Earlier PM used to say that we can recognise them by their clothes. Now how will we demonstrate? What clothes shall I wear? Should I wear a cap or keep a beard? Or will someone put a CCTV camera in my house to see whether I’m reading the namaz or not? Will there be CCTV cameras in mosques?” he asked.
He highlighted the difficulties in obtaining documents for ancient monuments, asking, “There is ‘Waqf by user’, temple by user, gurudwara by user, church by user…How many proofs will you ask for?…They are trying to incite riots and make their vote bank.”
Hussain went on to take objection to the statement that waqf boards were being made secular by the inclusion of non-Muslim members. “Will you include me, or a Muslim, a Sikh, a Buddhist, a Jain in the institutions made under Hindu religious acts, endowments act or other religious institutions?” he asked, asserting that this is against constitutional rights.
“What are you trying to prove, that we are not to be trusted, that we are not capable of running our institutions. You’re trying to turn us into second-rate citizens and you want to spy on us,” he said.
‘Amendments bulldozed through JPC’
Hussain also claimed that the bill is based on a “misinformation campaign”, and that a narrative was built for it over the past few months.
He pointed out that while the government is claiming to strengthen waqf boards, little had been done for the boards in the past 10 years. He claimed that the budget allocation for the Central Waqf Council was not passed on to it, and that several states did not constitute waqf boards.
Hussain raised questions over the functioning of the Joint Parliamentary Committee as well, alleging that several non-stakeholders who did not have any knowledge on waqf were called to give their inputs on the bill, and communal statements were also made during the discussions.
“I think it was the first time in 75 years of Parliamentary democracy in India that amendments were bulldozed without discussing clause by clause in the JPC…Those were not JPC’s recommendations, those were recommendations of NDA MPs,” he asserted.
‘Why did you support this bill in 1995?’
Hussain referred to Home Minister Amit Shah’s speech Wednesday where he said that this bill would not have come if the 1995 law and the subsequent amendments were not made.
However, Hussain asked, “When this bill came in 1995, and the amendments came in 2013, BJP that is claiming that the Congress party brought these draconian laws to appease a community…I want to ask them, why did you support this bill in 1995?”
He added, “Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh—were all here, and all of them passed the Waqf bill of 1995 with consensus…If this law was draconian, if it was brought to appease a community, if it was against the Constitution, then why did you support it at the time?”
He questioned the timing of the move, claiming that the bill was being brought in because of the BJP’s performance in the 2024 general elections. “They don’t know how to increase their vote bank, they don’t know what issue to raise, so they’ve brought the waqf board. They’re doing communal polarisation by bringing this act.”
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
