India’s opposition vows court challenge to Waqf amendment bill

India’s main opposition Congress party said today it will challenge in the Supreme Court the recently passed Waqf Amendment Bill, which overhauls laws governing Muslim religious endowments.

The controversial bill, which applies to waqf — land or property donated by Muslims for religious, educational, or charitable purposes — passed both houses of Parliament despite sharp resistance from opposition parties and Muslim organisations.

Early today, the bill cleared the upper house, the Rajya Sabha, after it was introduced by the Modi-led government amid mounting political and social opposition.

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh confirmed the party would “very soon be challenging in the Supreme Court the constitutionality of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024.”

His comments came shortly after Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge condemned the bill, saying it had been introduced to “harass the minorities.” Kharge criticised the manner of its passage, noting that during the vote in the lower house, or Lok Sabha, 288 lawmakers supported it while 232 opposed.

“When this bill was passed in the Lok Sabha late at night, 288 votes were cast in its favour and 232 against it. Why did this happen? This means that there are many flaws in the bill,” Kharge wrote on X. “From this, we can guess that despite opposition from various parties, this bill was brought arbitrarily.”

The legislation has drawn strong condemnation from Muslim civil society groups. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind called it “a direct assault on religious freedom and constitutional rights.”

“The passage is highly condemnable,” the group’s president, Syed Sadatullah Husaini, said in a statement, accusing the government of undermining the rights of minority communities.

However, Modi and members of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) defended the legislation as a move toward greater transparency and equity.

In a statement on X, Modi said the bill’s passage marked “a watershed moment in our collective quest for socio-economic justice, transparency and inclusive growth.”

“This will particularly help those who have long remained on the margins, thus being denied both voice and opportunity,” he said, adding that the waqf system had for decades lacked “transparency and accountability.”

“We will now enter an era where the framework will be more modern and sensitive to social justice,” Modi added.

India’s Muslim communities have faced decades of discrimination, which experts say has worsened under Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Hindu vigilante mobs have lynched Muslim traders and targeted small Muslim-owned businesses and anti-Muslim hate speech has surged – three quarters of incidents were reported from states ruled by the BJP.

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