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At a time when the BJP’s NDA allies Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) are in a tight spot over the amended Waqf Act — there have been a spate of resignations from the JD(U) and the RLD — the BJP has decided to launch an outreach campaign to convince voters that the law is for the benefit of the poor, Pasmanda Muslims, and women from the minority community.
While the Act is under challenge in the Supreme Court, the BJP, according to party insiders, has decided to frame its support for it as a matter of appeasement-free genuine secularism, transparency and social justice, with backward Muslims and women being given their “due for the first time”. In doing this, the party will project the Opposition as adversaries of both “genuine secularism” and social justice. The outreach is important in light of crucial Assembly elections that the party will face next, starting with Bihar later this year and then Bengal and Kerala, among other states, in 2026.
The BJP has set up a coordination committee headed by its Rajya Sabha MP Radha Mohan Das Agrawal and comprising its Minority Morcha chief Jamal Siddiqui; national secretary Anil Antony, the son of former Kerala Chief Minister A K Antony; and general secretary Dushyant Gautam, a Dalit face. This committee will campaign across the country, reaching out to people, including Muslims, about the benefits of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025.
BJP president and Union Health Minister J P Nadda and Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju were present at a meeting on Thursday in which the outreach plans and the message were firmed up — that the new law supported social justice and transparency; women and Pasmanada Muslims would be represented in Waqf Boards; and Waqf properties would run transparently to benefit poor Muslims.
At the meeting, Nadda is learnt to have said Opposition parties were misleading Muslims because of vote-bank politics, and underlined that the Modi government was determined to make “Pasmanda (backward)” Muslims and women stakeholders in the management of Waqf properties. He said the amended law would enable the utilisation of Waqf properties for the welfare of poor Muslims and women, and free them from the control of a few people who used them for personal enrichment. Rijiju is learnt to have defended the presence of non-Muslims in the Waqf Council and boards for the “secular” purpose of management of properties, which had “nothing to do with religion”.
The campaign will entail meetings with people, and the committee members may also address press conferences. FAQ sheets, including in Urdu, have been prepared to explain the law and its constitutionality.
Agrawal was part of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf Bill and proposed an amendment extending the timeline for courts to allow the filing of suits, subject to the waqf submitting an affidavit on why it did not register on a central website within six months. The 2024 Bill had stated that six months after the proposed law’s commencement, no suit, appeals or legal proceedings can be filed by waqfs if they are not registered on the website.
During the debate on the Waqf Bill in the Rajya Sabha, Agrawal quoted from the Quran, claiming that none of the Opposition MPs could counter his points in the joint parliamentary panel and instead derided him as a Maulana for having “read the Quran extensively”. Agrawal is one of the two BJP national general secretaries from Uttar Pradesh and a four-time MLA who vacated his Gorakhpur City Assembly seat for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the 2022 Assembly polls. Agrawal, popularly known as RMD in Gorakhpur, is a paediatrician and a popular leader in Gorakhpur.
Siddiqui who heads the party’s minority wing told The Indian Express that the campaign would go on for a month and he would visit Punjab, Haryana, and Jammu and Kashmir. Since social justice is the BJP’s pitch in defending the law, Gautam who is from a Dalit community brings the social justice angle to the committee. Antony jumped ship from the Congress to the BJP in 2023. At the time, it was said he would lead the party’s efforts to reach out to Christians in Kerala as it attempts to make an electoral breakthrough in the state.
