‘The BJP’s agenda is to defame Muslims’: Congress MP Naseer Hussain on Waqf Invoice

If this Invoice is handed in Parliament, do you assume claims made by Hindu right-wing teams on historic Islamic websites will enhance?

If this Invoice turns into regulation, it has the potential to ignite non secular divisions in each village of the nation. Anyone can go to the deputy commissioner and create doubts concerning the provenance of historic monuments and land titles resulting in main communal contentions. All it will result in litigation on communal traces, which in flip can be utilised to polarise [people]. That’s the reason the Invoice is harmful for the democratic secular cloth of the nation.

A number of farmers all around the nation have complained about notices from district waqf boards claiming their agricultural lands. What do you must say about this?

I can’t remark as I’m not effectively versed with the details of various instances, however broadly, what is going on reveals the disjunction between varied land legal guidelines. Inam Abolition, Land Ceiling and Land Reform Acts had been handed in lots of states. As a part of this, land has been redistributed to the tiller however such legal guidelines had been challenged legally and the Supreme Courtroom delivered a judgment {that a} waqf land can’t be alienated [part of the judgment reads: ‘Once a waqf, always a waqf’].

This has led to conditions the place the waqf boards really feel they’ve the precise to assert lands that had been taken away. In such instances, state governments ought to step in and give you an answer in order that the aggrieved farmers and the waqf don’t endure any loss and are compensated appropriately.

Couldn’t the BJP have prevailed on its allies to get the Invoice handed? Why did it ship it to the JPC?

The Invoice is ill-conceived, poorly drafted and bereft of authorized logic; it was swiftly tabled in Parliament. No stakeholders had been consulted in its preparation and there was no want for it in any respect. There have been no severe complaints or judicial prodding concerning the functioning of the Waqf Act 1995 and its amendments of 2013.

The Invoice was introduced in to rake up political controversy. All opposition events opposed its introduction; even some BJP allies such because the Telugu Desam Social gathering recommended that it needs to be despatched to the JPC. Sensing that the Invoice wouldn’t get Parliament’s approval, they despatched it to the JPC for additional session.

An extended model of this interview initially appeared in Frontline