Strong BJP leader and Lok Sabha member Jagdambika Pal was on Tuesday appointed as the head of the joint committee of Parliament set up to examine the contentious Waqf (Amendment) Bill. Amid protests by the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, the Centre decided to refer the bill to a joint committee of the two Houses. Notably, the joint parliamentary committee has 31 members -- 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha -- and will submit its report by the next session.
The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on Friday last adopted a motion moved by Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, who also holds the parliamentary affairs portfolio, naming the members to be part of the committee.
A formal notification naming Pal as the chairperson of the joint committee is set to be issued shortly, the officials said.
Who is Jagdambika Pal?
A strong BJP member, Jagdambika Pal was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for 1 day in 1998. Jagdambika Pal in the 15th Lok Sabha represented the Indian National Congress, until he resigned on 7 March 2014. Later, he joined the BJP in 2014 and re-entered the Lok Sabha.
He left Indian National Congress to join All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) of ND Tiwari but in 1997, he formed Akhil Bharatiya Loktantrik Congress along with Naresh Agarwal, Rajeev Shukla and Shyam Sunder Sharma and Bacha Pathak and became Minister of Transport in Kalyan Singh government.
Jagdambika Pal later became the president of the Uttar Pradesh state unit of the Indian National Congress. He was in 2009 elected to the 15th Lok Sabha from Domariyaganj Lok Sabha constituency in Siddharthnagar district, Uttar Pradesh.
Jagdambika Pal on 3 July 2011 opened Commemorative plaque at Mahua Dabar, where the British massacred 5,000 people during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
The 12 members of the joint Parliamentary committee are from the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), including eight from the BJP, and nine from the opposition.
In the Upper House, four are from the BJP, four from the opposition, one from the YSRCP, which has opposed the Bill, and one is a nominated member.
It should be noted that the Waqf Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha and later referred to a joint committee of Parliament after a heated debate, with the government asserting the proposed law did not intend to interfere with the functioning of mosques and the opposition calling it targeting of Muslims and an attack on the Constitution.
