Questioning the breach of secrecy in the Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, the All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz (AIPMM) has written to the panel over BJP MP Nishikant Dubey suggesting a probe into alleged ISI and China links of some who had sent suggestions. “There has been an attempt to tarnish the image of Muslims in the name of people making suggestions to the JCP. The conduct of the member must be probed. We understand Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set up the panel on the Waqf Bill with noble intentions to consider views from various sections,” AIPMM chief and former Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar Ansari told The Indian Express. In his letter to the parliamentary panel's chief Jagadambika Pal, Ansari said no attempts must be made by any member of the committee to create doubts about its confidentiality. “We saw a statement by a committee member (Dubey) that the JCP had received about 1.25 crore suggestions … There was a demand for an investigation of the origin of suggestions as some of them came from those suspected to have a ‘radical Islamic image and alleged links to the ISI’. We want to know on what grounds the member made such a statement,” read the letter dated October 3. Ansari said members of the panel must be “warned against turning a sensitive issue into a communal one”. “Fundamentalist groups, individuals like Zakir Naik or foreign powers like the ISI (Pakistan) or China or their proxies may be involved given that 1.25 crore submissions have been received. If such forces are involved, it would be an attempt to manipulate our legislative process, an attack on the very foundations of our parliamentary system and must be treated as a national security issue,” Dubey had said last week. Ansari also urged Pal to fix a date, time, and place for the AIPMM to present its suggestions and objections regarding the Waqf Bill, claiming that it has been working for the cause of Muslims for over 25 years. “Just before the change in political power in 2014, the Waqf (Amendment) Act of 2013 was passed in Parliament. Even before the Bill was passed, the Joint Committee of Parliament (1996-2006) studied its historical background in great detail. You know that Justice Rajinder Sachar prepared an in-depth report on the issue of the participation of minorities in social power. The same Sachar Committee also mentioned that Waqfs across the country have 4,90,021 properties (page number 220). The concept of Waqf existed from the time when there was no power of pen, paper and law. Properties were donated as part of religious procedures…,” the letter observed. Claiming that there was a need for reform following the 2013 amendment to the Act, the AIPMM said an attempt to change the entire structure of an institution does not count as reform. “It is seen as an attempt to change the structure to suit one’s political, social and economic interests,” the letter read. Ansari said there had been a “clear intention to limit Muslim representation” to even less than 50%. “Political power wants to take control of the CEO’s post and is insisting on nominating members instead of electing them. The nomination of members by the state governments in Waqf Boards of the state leads to government interference in the management of Waqf properties,” he wrote. Even as the Sachar Committee report of 2004-2005 pegs its numbers at 40%, Pasmanda Muslims, considered to be “deprived and downtrodden”, are seen to make up almost 80-85% of the community’s population in India and are concentrated in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Over the years and especially ahead of the recent Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had been trying to woo the Pasmandas after its 2022 Lok Sabha bypoll victories in Azamgarh and Rampur in UP, seen to have a considerable Muslim population. It is believed that the party’s good performance in the 2022 UP Assembly elections was due to it gaining some Pasmanda votes. It was during the BJP’s 2017 Odisha national executive that Modi mentioned the term Pasmanda Muslims clearly for the first time. During the Hyderabad conclave earlier this year, he mentioned it on both days and largely in the context of UP and Bihar.
