New Delhi, Apr 2: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday asserted that for vote bank politics, fear is being spread that the Waqf bill is an interference in the religious matters of Muslims and properties donated by them.
Intervening in Lok Sabha during a debate on the Waqf amendment bill, he said non-Muslims in the Waqf council and boards are meant purely for ensuring the administration of properties by stated aims.
He underlined that Waqf is a type of charitable institution where a person donates his property for social, religious or public welfare purposes, without the right to take it back.
Shah said the word ‘donation’ has special importance because donation can be done only of that thing which is our own property. No one can donate government property, he asserted.
Addressing the House, Shah said a vote bank is being created by intimidating minorities, and confusion is being spread in the country by creating an atmosphere of fear among the minorities.
There was no provision earlier to include any non-Muslim person among those who run religious institutions, nor is the NDA government going to do so, he said.
“To those who give big speeches that the right to equality has ended or there will be discrimination between two religions or the religious rights of Muslims will be interfered with, I want to tell them that nothing like this is going to happen,” the senior BJP leader underlined.
He also said the Waqf law was made ‘extreme’ in 2013 for appeasement ahead of parliamentary polls, and if the law had not been tweaked then, the present bill might not have been needed.
Asserting that misconceptions are being spread on the Waqf bill by some parties to shore up their vote banks Shah said that, through the proposed legislation, PM Narendra Modi is fulfilling the wishes of RJD chief Lalu Prasad while the opposition had failed to do so.
Shah insisted that the new legislation may not have been necessary if the Waqf (Amendment) Act had not been passed in 2013, when the Congress-led UPA II was in power, just months before the Lok Sabha elections the following year.
At the time, Lalu Prasad, whose RJD had been part of the governing coalition before withdrawing and then extending support, had spoken on the Waqf Amendment bill tabled by the UPA II.
Quoting Prasad, Amit Shah said, “We welcome the amendment bill presented by the government. I support the statements made by (BJP’s) Shahnawaz Hussain and others. Most of the land has been grabbed, be it government-owned or otherwise. People in the Waqf Board have sold all of the prime land. In Patna, apartments have been constructed on the Dak Bungalow property. There has been a lot of loot like this.” Click Here For Parliament Live Updates
“We support the amendments, but we want you (the government) to bring in a strict law in the future and put such people behind bars,” the minister quoted the RJD chief as having said.
Shah then pointed to the opposition benches and said, “Lalu Prasad’s wishes were not fulfilled by them, but Narendra Modi is doing it. Lalu ji had asked for a stricter law.”
Home Minister also said that the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, was not against any religion and that the Congress and other opposition parties were spreading misconceptions on it in the interest of vote-bank politics.
The discussion on the Waqf Bill, which began on Wednesday afternoon, saw strong speeches by other leaders as well. Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju claimed the Congress had made “questionable” changes to Waqf laws when it was in power, and the UPA government led by it would have even given the Parliament to the Waqf if it was not stopped.
“If we had not introduced this amendment today, even the building we are sitting in could have been claimed as Waqf property. If Prime Minister Modi’s government had not come to power, several other properties would also have been de-notified,” Rijiju said.
Congress MP, and the party’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, Gaurav Gogoi hit back at the government, claiming that it was issuing “religious certificates” by introducing the provision that donations could only be made by Muslims who had been practicing their faith for at least five years.
Launching a ‘4D’ attack on the BJP, Gogoi said, “This bill is an attack on the basic structure of our Constitution, an attack on our federal structure, and has four objectives – to dilute the Constitution, defame minority communities, divide Indian society, and disenfranchise minorities.”