Hyderabad, Aug 13: AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has highlighted the danger of Waqf Amendment Bill by citing an incident in Madhya Pradesh where a district collector was transferred after he refused to give permission to Hindu outfits to pray in a mosque.
The Hyderabad MP referred to media reports about Vidisha district Collector’s transfer for following law.
“In Madhya Pradesh, Sangh outfits demanded that they should be allowed to pray in a mosque. The District Collector noted that the structure was a mosque in ASI gazette & refused permission. The collector was transferred because he followed the law,” Owaisi said in a social media post.
“This is the danger of the Wakf Amendment Bill. The govt wants to give expansive powers to the collector, if someone says that a masjid is not a masjid; the collector must follow the mob’s demands or s/he’ll be transferred. No amount of evidence will be sufficient,” he wrote.
The Madhya Pradesh government transferred Vidisha district Collector Buddhesh Kumar Vaid for refusing permission to Hindu groups to worship in the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)-protected Bijamandal mosque in Vidisha on Nag Panchami festival. The Hindu groups claimed that the 11th century mosque is Vijaya temple.
The Collector turned down their plea citing the gazette notification of 1951, produced by ASI, which identified the monument as Beejamandal mosque.
The government transferred Vaid as deputy secretary in the home department.
Owaisi, president of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is one of the MPs in the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) constituted to look into Waqf Amendment Bill, 2024.
The 31-member JPC comprises 21 Lok Sabha MPs and 10 Rajya Sabha members.
Asaduddin Owaisi, Imran Masood, Mohammad Jawed, Maulana Mohibullah Nadvi are among the Lok Sabha MPs on the panel.
Rajya Sabha MPs Gulam Ali, Syed Naseer Hussain, Mohammed Nadeem Ul Haq and M. Mohammed Abdullah have also been included in the JPC.
Two MPs each from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have been named JPC members. Asaduddin Owaisi (Hyderabad) and BJP’s D.K. Aruna (Mahabubnagar) are from Telangana. TDP’s parliamentary party leader Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu and YSR Congress Party’s Vijayasai Reddy are from Andhra Pradesh.
AIMIM and YSR Congress Party opposed Waqf Amendment Bill, which was tabled in Lok Sabha last week. TDP, a key ally of BJP, supported the Bill despite reservations from the Muslim community.
Opposition parties including the Congress, DMK, NCP, Trinamool Congress strongly opposed the Bill saying its provisions were against federalism and the constitutional provisions. The government agreed to the demand to refer the Bill to JPC for analysis.
