In the meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee held on Thursday, MPs asked many tough questions to the top officials

MPs asked several tough questions to top officials during a meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee considering the Waqf (Amendment) Bill on Thursday, with members of opposition parties arguing that the ministries were not considering the draft bill independently and were only following the government’s view. Sources gave this information.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee was on Thursday apprised of the Waqf properties present in the National Capital Region, including properties present on land belonging to the Road Transport and Railways ministries. In this meeting, Secretary of Department of Urban Affairs and Road Transport Anurag Jain and Member (Infrastructure) of Railway Board Anil Kumar Khandelwal and officials of the concerned ministries made a presentation.

The meeting also witnessed a heated debate between members of the Opposition, including Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s Kalyan Banerjee and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh, leading to the intervention of the committee chairman Jagdambika Pal. The ministries argued that the Waqf (Amendment) Bill would help them remove encroachments on government land and complete development projects faster.

Opposition members argued that the existing laws have a provision to challenge a property being wrongly notified as Wakf, while the government is saying that if it claims such property, it should not be questioned.

An opposition party member said, “All the three ministries have only supported the stand of the Central government without any thought.” Officials of the Ministry of Urban Affairs briefed the committee about the process of land acquisition followed by the then British government in 1911 to build the city of Delhi.

Heated debates broke out during the meeting when officials of the Ministry of Urban Affairs could not answer questions of members on the land acquisition process followed by the British administration, parliamentary sources said. “There was also an attempt to suppress some information,” claimed an opposition member in the committee, headed by senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jagadambika Pal.

Parliamentary sources said Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) member A. Raja said a Wakf Act was passed in 1913 and the Urban Affairs Ministry did not make any mention of it in its presentation. According to the presentation by the ministry, the Wakf Board made claims on 138 properties between 1970 and 1977, which were acquired by the British government for the construction of New Delhi.

A total of 341 square kilometre of land was acquired for the construction of the national capital region and the affected persons were given adequate compensation. This claim was opposed by some members. The committee members wanted the government to find out whether the Wakf Board’s claim on properties in Delhi was made after following the procedures laid down in the Wakf Act of 1954.