New Delhi: Several Opposition MPs on Tuesday walked out of a meeting of the joint committee on the Waqf Bill, alleging derogatory remarks against them by a BJP member.
Opposition members, including Kalyan Banerjee, Gaurav Gogoi, A Raja, Mohamed Abdulla and Arvind Sawant, stormed out of the meeting of the parliamentary panel, which was hearing a presentation from representatives of the Ministry of Minority Affairs on the Bill.
The Opposition members rejoined the meeting after staying away for nearly an hour.
However, BJP members claimed that the opposition members were abusing the chairman of the committee Jagadambika Pal. This is the second consecutive day when Opposition members have walked out of the meeting following differences.
Meanwhile, the Opposition MPs also wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on the “gross violation of parliamentary code of conduct” in the meeting.
The letter came a day after several opposition MPs boycotted a sitting of the committee over the submission of former Karnataka State Minorities Commission chairman Anwar Manippady, who named several Opposition leaders, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and K Rahman Khan, in the alleged embezzlement of Waqf properties. “The proceedings of the Committee were conducted in a biased and partisan manner by the chairperson Jagdambika Pal,” Opposition members Gogoi, Syed Naseer Hussain, Imran Masood (all Congress), A Raja and MM Abdulla (both DMK), Asaduddin Owaisi (AIMIM) and Kalyan Banerjee (TMC) wrote in the letter.
The joint committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill had on Monday called Manippady to hear his views on the draft legislation in the context of the Karnataka Waqf scam report of 2012.
“The note contained no observations on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2024. Instead, it was full of politically motivated allegations against leaders of the Karnataka Congress, including Mallikarjun Kharge, Hon’ble Leader of Opposition (Rajya Sabha),” the letter read.
The members said despite vehement protests by several committee members that Kharge occupies a constitutional position of high dignity and is not present in the meeting, the witness was allowed to speak by the chairperson.