Waqf Invoice: In Double Whammy, Congress Could Lose Muslim & Christian Help In Kerala, Courtesy BJP – News18
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Congress’s catch-22 scenario in Kerala can largely be attributed to BJP’s quiet outreach to the Church within the state the place Christians kind 18.4 per cent of the state’s inhabitants
The Congress stands to lose the favored help of Muslim voters in Kerala the place an enormous part of the neighborhood is battling the Waqf Board in land or property disputes. (PTI)
The Waqf Modification Invoice, which was handed in Lok Sabha on the intervening evening of Wednesday and Thursday, has introduced a Catch-22 scenario for the Congress in Kerala. The BJP, which remains to be making inroads in Kerala politics, checkmated the Congress-led UDF, leaving them with little avenues for escape.
In its pursuit to be seen on the facet of Muslims of India, the Congress, mockingly, stands to lose the favored help of Muslim voters in Kerala the place an enormous part of the neighborhood is battling the Waqf Board in land or property disputes. Alternatively, one other of Congress’s conventional vote banks that has just lately been slowly slipping away in Kerala — the Christian neighborhood — too shall be moderately upset with the Grand Previous Celebration after its Members of Parliament selected to ignore a KCBC attraction to vote in favour of the modification.
THE QUIET CHURCH OUTREACH
Congress’s catch-22 scenario in Kerala can largely be attributed to BJP’s quiet outreach to the Church within the state the place Christians kind 18.4 per cent of the state’s inhabitants. The BJP has been actively partaking with the Christian neighborhood in Kerala, significantly the influential Catholic Church, to garner help for the Invoice. Former Union minister KJ Alphonse and the get together’s first-ever MP from the state Suresh Gopi are learnt to have reached out “to take away any misunderstandings if one might have concerning the Invoice”.
Sources aware about the matter say the point of interest of this outreach was the Munambam land dispute in Ernakulam district. The Kerala State Waqf Board has claimed possession of round 400 acres of land, affecting over 600 households, predominantly Christians and a few Hindus, who’ve lived there for generations.
These residents, primarily fishermen, maintain registered deeds and have paid land taxes, but face authorized challenges on account of provisions within the current Waqf Act of 1995. The character of the regulation permits the Waqf Board to say properties it deems as its personal, even bypassing civil courts and relegating disputes to Waqf Tribunals. The transparency and equity of Waqf Tribunals have been a long-standing situation for a lot of who should cope with it.
BJP discovered widespread floor with the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC), a robust physique representing the Syro-Malabar, Latin, and Syro-Malankara Catholic Church buildings on the difficulty of Munambam land dispute, prompting it to again the Invoice and urging Kerala’s Members of Parliament to help the Waqf Modification Invoice, calling sure provisions of the present Act “unconstitutional and unjust”.
Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, KCBC president, cited the Munambam case the place Farook Faculty, which initially offered the land, confirmed it was a present—not Waqf property. After turning into the state president of BJP, one of many first conferences of Rajeev Chandrashekhar was on Tuesday with Cardinal Cleemis, who by then issued the attraction. After assembly him, Chandrashekhar stated: “I thanked him for the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council’s attraction to Kerala MPs to help the Waqf Modification Invoice. It’s completely incorrect and mischievous for anybody to classify this Invoice as in opposition to any neighborhood…”
Although sources counsel some Kerala Congress MPs reached out to the Church describing it as “political compulsion”, the BJP ensured the Christian neighborhood at massive, and the Church particularly, are upset with the get together the place it was seen disregarding an attraction by KCBC.
The Waqf (Modification) Invoice is a weapon aimed toward marginalising Muslims and usurping their private legal guidelines and property rights. This assault on the Structure by the RSS, BJP and their allies is aimed toward Muslims in the present day however units a precedent to focus on different communities sooner or later.…
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 2, 2025
MUSLIMS WON’T BE HAPPY EITHER
Minority affairs minister Kiren Rijiju, whereas presenting the amended Invoice, went poetic to make his level: “Meine ek shama jalai hai, hawaon ke khilaf (I’ve lit a lamp in opposition to the drive of the wind)”. The drive he was referring to was not simply his political opponent who alleged on the ground of the Home that the Invoice was anti-Muslim but additionally organisations like Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, a premier organisation of Deobandi theological leaning, and Jamat E Islami, which has been on the forefront of advocacy in opposition to the brand new Waqf Invoice and preservation of Waqf properties.
It might be ironic to even counsel that the Congress stands to lose Muslim votes in Kerala for opposing the Invoice. Whereas these organisations have tried to maintain their grip on the Waqf Board and therefore, could be comfortable concerning the Congress’s positioning contained in the Home, there’s a huge part of victims in Kerala who occur to be from the Muslim neighborhood and are entangled in authorized battles with the Waqf board after their properties had been allegedly taken over utilizing the outdated regulation. They’d be upset with the Congress.
There are reportedly 40,951 pending instances associated to Waqf properties in Waqf tribunals throughout India as of latest updates. Out of those, roughly 9,942 instances have been filed by members of the Muslim neighborhood in opposition to Waqf Boards. This implies that not less than 20 per cent of the whole disputes contain Muslims difficult the Waqf Boards’ actions or claims, equivalent to encroachment, property mismanagement or possession disputes.
An estimate means that there are as many as 1,008 litigations in Kerala that pertain to Waqf properties. Of those, there are solely 457 instances the place non-Muslims are concerned whereas there are a whopping 551 instances the place Muslims are battling the Waqf system in place, making it slightly above 54 per cent of the whole litigations as of the autumn of 2024. These Muslim households need a truthful listening to and seeing Congress bat for a system that denied them so will certainly translate into angst.
In his speech on the BJP headquarters on November 23, 2024, following the get together’s landslide victory within the Maharashtra elections, PM Narendra Modi acknowledged: “Waqf is an act of appeasement politics by the Congress, and it has no place within the Structure.” Members of the Union cupboard counsel that after this laws, the Waqf’s energy shall be again within the arms of what authorities sources name “the unique guardians of India’s syncretic values — Sufi, Barelwi and Shia Muslims for whom Waqf has at all times been a matter of religion”.
- Location :
Kerala, India, India
