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Journalism of Courage
AS THE Hemant Soren government drags its feet on the matter, after first proposing the same, the issue of providing a room for namaz on the Jharkhand Assembly premises has now reached the state High Court.
In response to a PIL filed by petitioner Ajay Kumar Modi, seeking the court’s intervention in the matter, the Soren government said a seven-member committee has been formed, which would submit its report by July 31.
This is the second time the government has set up a committee on the issue. It’s unclear what happened to the first, which was set up in September 2021, soon after the controversy erupted, and was to submit its report in 45 days.
A Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kumar Mishra and Justice Anand Sen has fixed the next date of hearing the matter on June 22, after the summer vacation.
The PIL alleges that the allotment of a prayer room to members of a community on government premises amounts to violation of the fundamental rights of others, as it breaches equal right to religion.
The matter first rose when the Jharkhand Assembly Secretariat issued a notification on September 2, 2021, allotting a room for namaz in the new Jharkhand Assembly building. The BJP immediately protested, disrupting the House proceedings and accusing the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) of doing “appeasement politics”.
BJP MLAs also entered the Well of the House chanting Hanuman Chalisa and “Jai Shri Ram” slogans, and demanding the construction of a temple on the Assembly premises.
The government argued that the old Assembly building too had set aside space for offering namaz, though there was no formal provision of a room.
However, as the BJP did not relent in its protests, the government formed a committee to look into the issue and submit a report in 45 days. Twenty months later, there is no information on the report.
Sources in the government said there was no formal request made by any Muslim MLA for a namaz room, but that there are around 50 Muslims who hold various positions in the Assembly.
“The matter was needlessly politicised as earlier too Muslim legislators and others used to offer namaz in the old Assembly buildings, though a room was not allotted formally,” an Assembly employee, who wished anonymity, said.
Muslims number roughly 15% of Jharkhand’s population. There are four Muslim MLAs currently in the 82-member Assembly (including one nominated member): the JMM’s Sarfaraz Ahmed from Gandey and Hafizul Ansari from Madhupur, and ally Congress’s Alamgir Alam from Pakur and Irfan Ansari from Jamtara.
The Soren government has told the High Court now that it is setting up a seven-member team to consider the issue. The members include Stephen Marandi (the JMM MLA from Maheshpur) as coordinator, apart from MLAs Sarfaraz Ahmed of the JMM, Neelkanth Singh Munda of the BJP, Pradeep Yadav of the Congress, Binod Singh of the CPI(M-L), Lambodar Mahato of the AJSU Party and Deepika Pandey of the Congress.
The committee is also gathering inputs from other states as regards similar allotment of rooms to members of a community for offering prayers.
While the coordinator of the committee, Stepehen Marandi, could not be reached, Sarfaraz Ahmed said: “I am just a member, and all I can say is that we have called for the records of the Assembly and we are studying it.”
BJP spokesperson Pratul Shahdeo said: “They allotted a room for namaz without any demand and instead gave an excuse that there was an earlier order, which they could not produce. The Hemant Soren-led government was supposed to give a report in 45 days, and it is more than 450 days. This shows the very style of functioning of the government. Whether it is jobs, unemployment allowance, defining (who is a) local, there is no will to do things on time.”
