Chaos also broke out during the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) meeting on the Waqf (Amendment) bill after The Delhi Waqf Board supported the proposed changes in the law, sources said. Delhi Waqf board director IAS Ashwini Kumar supported the law as opposition MPs called his stand “illegal”.
The opposition said that the director of the Delhi Waqf board is not a Muslim and said that the law states that non-Muslims cannot be on the Waqf board. A BJP MP revealed that when Arvind Kejriwal was the Chief Minister, he appointed a Hindu director to the Delhi Waqf board.
On Monday, the opposition walked out of the meeting in protest against the presentation made by the Delhi Waqf Board. AAP member Sanjay Singh raised the alarm that the presentation was not vetted by the Delhi government. The opposition also alleged that the original report of the Waqf Board was changed without the consent of Delhi Chief Minister Atishi.
Atishi also wrote a letter to the committee, saying that the presentation should be treated as “null”.
The meeting was also attended by TMC Member of Parliament, Kalyan Banerjee, who was suspended for a day due to his misbehavior last week. Banerjee injured her hand after smashing a glass water bottle during the meeting following a heated argument with BJP MLA Abhijit Gangopadhyay. On Tuesday, Banerjee said she became angry after Abhijit Gangopadhyay abused her and her parents.
Narrating the sequence of events, Banerjee said, “That day, there was a heated exchange of words between Nasir Hussain of Congress and Abhijit Gangopadhyay. I said why is he (Abhijit Gangopadhyay) shouting? Then he started abusing me, my mother, my my. my father and my wife … After the chairman came, he was harsh with me but this frustrated me, and I smashed (the glass) on the table.
“I never had the intention of throwing a bottle at the chairman. The chairman does not have the power to stop the members, only the Speaker. Abhijit Gangopadhyay is a black mark on the judges and he is a rotten man,” he said.