“We have decided that we will not take part in the upcoming tour,” Congress MP Mohammad Jawed told The Indian Express on Thursday. The study tour to hear views of diverse stakeholders on the matter is scheduled from November 9-14, during which the panel will visit Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Patna and Lucknow.
Jawed said, “We are also answerable to people in our constituencies and respective parties. We understand the committee is an important one, but we need time to prepare for tours and meetings.”
AAP member Sanjay Singh also confirmed that he will not take part in the study tour.
At a press conference in Kolkata Thursday, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee, who is a member of the panel, accused Chairperson Jagdambika Pal of turning the proceedings into a “mockery” and said, “The Chairman is working with an agenda and not for national interest. We have decided to boycott the upcoming tour of the JPC…”
“We have pointed out earlier that the chairman never held meetings in consultation with us. He fixed up meetings consecutively from morning to night in a very hectic manner. He is calling persons and organisations as per his own choice… from organisations very close to BJP and have no stake in the waqf matter…” said Banerjee.
On Monday, some Opposition members of the committee wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and threatened to “disassociate” from the panel, accusing Pal of “bulldozing the proceedings” and “stonewalling” them. On Tuesday, the members met Birla and discussed their issues.
Accusing Pal of taking “unilateral decisions on fixing the dates of sittings even for consecutive three days, where persons/ bodies (are) to be called as witness”, they had said that it is not “practically possible” for them to prepare.
Referring to Pal’s Karnataka visit Thursday, Jawed also said that Pal shouldn’t have gone “without members of the committee”.
Pal invited farmers from north Karnataka to meet the panel in Delhi to express their concerns over “land identified as waqf properties” while the ruling Congress called the visit a “drama” and claimed that the “chairman has come for party work.”
Pal said that a member of the committee and Bengaluru South BJP MP Tejasvi Surya had invited him, and both visited Hubballi and Vijayapura districts, and received “memorandums running into thousands of pages”. Around 70 delegations met him Thursday in two districts, he said. “We will place all documents before the JPC and it will go into it and see what can be incorporated into JPC report, which can be submitted during the winter session,” Pal said.
Karnataka Deputy CM D K Shivakumar said, “They have staged a drama. The JPC must have accountability. When they are visiting a state, they must inform the government and the officials must be informed… The chairman of the committee has come for party work along with an MP who is a member of the JPC.”
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said in a post on X: “The Chairman… recently went to Karnataka to look into some local matter. The Committee does not have investigation powers, its job is to look into the Bill alone. Moreover the Chairman cannot act unilaterally and the Committee has to act collectively. We had already conducted a consultation in Karnataka. We are bound by parliamentary procedure so we aren’t in a position to explain the questionable conduct of the Chairman since the formation of the Committee.”