Waqf Bill passed in Parliament: What next for Opposition?

The Opposition put up a spirited fight against the Waqf (Amendment) Bill in the just concluded Parliament session. Now that the legislation is set to get Presidential assent, the Opposition has to gear up for the bigger challenge – continuing its legal fight to have the Bill quashed for its alleged “unconstitutional” character while blunting the BJP’s predictable pivoting of the Bill for communal polarisation.

Also read: DMK to challenge Waqf Bill in Supreme Court, says Stalin

The Bill has already been challenged in the Supreme Court through two separate petitions for being violative of several Articles of the Constitution. The petitions have been moved by Mohammed Jawed, Congress’s Lok Sabha MP from Bihar’s Kishanganj, and AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi. That these wouldn’t be the only petitions seeking the Bill to be struck down is also clear. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s DMK, Congress’s communications department chief Jairam Ramesh, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and several other organisations and Opposition leaders have expressed their intent to follow Jawed and Owaisi’s lead.

Will Waqf Bill help INDIA bloc in Bihar polls?

For the Opposition, though, the legal challenge is the more prolonged half of the battle it needs to prepare for against the Bill and its architects in the BJP given the ordinarily slow pace at which the apex court moves to dispose such matters. The more immediate clash between the Opposition and the BJP over the legislation is political.

Also read: Parliament's nod to Waqf Bill 'watershed moment': PM Modi

Opposition parties are acutely aware that the BJP would raise an onslaught accusing them of “Muslim appeasement”, a charge heard ad nauseam from the Treasury Benches in Parliament, and one that Prime Minister Narendra Modi uses brazenly in the electoral arena for communal polarisation.

Bihar, a state with a nearly 18 per cent Muslim electorate, goes to polls later this year. INDIA bloc constituents such as the RJD, the Congress and the Left Parties, who have direct stakes in the Bihar elections are hopeful that the unease among Muslims over the Bill would prove dear for BJP’s ‘secular’ partners such as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), the LJP(RV) and HAM of Union ministers Chirag Paswan and Jitan Ram Manjhi, respectively, and Rajya Sabha MP Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha. The JD(U) has already faced a flurry of desertions by its prominent Muslim leaders over the past 24 hours who have all slammed Nitish for supporting a Bill that targets their community and its religious endowments (waqf).

Also read: Catholic Church next? It owns more land than Waqf Board, says RSS magazine

The INDIA parties believe Muslims, particularly in the state’s most financially and socially backward Seemanchal region, will consolidate behind them in the upcoming polls. However, there is also a sense of uneasiness within the INDIA bloc over the BJP and its allies firming up their hold on the predominantly Hindu vote in other regions of the state by aggressively selling the legislation as a weapon against the “waqf mafia and its political patrons”.

“There is no doubt that this Bill is unconstitutional and its only purpose is dog-whistle politics but electorally it is a tricky thing. We all know how Modi and his party leaders will use it in the election; what we have to figure out is how we respond. In Seemanchal, Muslims are very agitated and we will gain what we lost in 2020 but in other areas, we have to stick to our core issue of employment instead of falling into the BJP’s trap by responding on the Waqf Bill,” a senior Bihar Congress leader told The Federal.

Also read: Waqf (Amendment) Bill brings to fore raging 13-year row in Karnataka

Echoing a similar view, the RJD’s Aurangabad MP Abhay Kumar said, “The BJP will definitely try to polarise voters by claiming we want Muslims to take over land of Hindus just like in the Lok Sabha elections the Prime Minister went around saying they will take away your mangalsutra, bhains (buffalo) and other things... we have to be vigilant against these attempts and ensure Bihar’s people are not fooled again.”

BJP’s narrative for Bihar elections

Sources in the BJP claim that the party is working on a two-pronged narrative that would help consolidate its hold in the Hindu-dominated regions of the state and simultaneously “minimise electoral damage from the Bill for the NDA in Seemanchal and parts of Mithilanchal” which have a sizeable Muslim population.

Also read: Waqf Bill: Of misplaced priorities, diversionary tactics and political ploy

“The explanation for the Bill is simple. It will prevent the waqf mafia and its political patrons from taking over land of Hindus and it will benefit Pasmanda (backward) Muslims and Muslim women who suffered under the previous Waqf system. A majority of Muslims in Bihar, including those in Seemanchal, belong to the Pasmanda samaj. The BJP and JD(U) will explain to them how this law is for their benefit,” a Bihar legislative council member of the BJP told The Federal.

The Bihar poll outcome would also set the tone for the electoral battles that would follow in the first half of 2026 in key states such as Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Opposition, particularly the Congress party, has already suffered two devastating electoral blows from the BJP in Maharashtra and Haryana, which had voted overwhelmingly for the INDIA bloc in the Lok Sabha polls only to return to the saffron fold months later. If Bihar, where the NDA had outperformed the INDIA bloc even in the Lok Sabha elections, rebuffs the Opposition again, the BJP is bound to project the outcome as yet another endorsement of Modi’s politics and policies, including the Waqf Bill.

Munambam land row in Kerala

The BJP has already started fine-tuning its narrative on the Waqf Bill for the Kerala polls, projecting the legislation as a panacea against future land rows like the one that has been simmering in Munambam. The southern state’s ruling LDF government as well as the Congress-led UDF Opposition have both dubbed the BJP’s concern for the people in Munambam as “a ploy to sow division and hatred between Christians and Muslims”.

The BJP’s aggressive posturing on Munambam has also put the Congress in a dilemma, partly of its own making. During the discussion on the Bill in Parliament, BJP leaders jabbed the Congress repeatedly with assertions that the Congress will “find it difficult to face the Christians of Kerala” after opposing the Waqf Bill.

Congress MPs from the state sought to blunt the assault by voicing unwavering support for the people in Munambam, questioning the BJP over atrocities by Hindu groups against Christians in various parts of the country and questioning the Centre on how the Bill would resolve the Munambam issue given Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju’s clarification that the Waqf legislation will not be applied retrospectively.

If the Congress’s Kerala leaders were let down, it was by their own high command. Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi was absent from Lok Sabha when the Bill was discussed and voted upon. Malayalam daily Suprabhaatham, mouthpiece of the influential Muslim outfit Samastha Kerala Jemiyyathul Ulama, called out Priyanka’s absence as a ‘blot that will remain’.

Questions over Rahul’s absence in LS

The Suprabhaatham editorial was also critical of Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for not speaking against the Bill during the discussion in Lok Sabha. Rahul, who was absent for the most part of the 12-hour discussion on the legislation but turned up to vote against it, chose X (formerly Twitter) over Lok Sabha to share his brief view on the Bill, calling it a “weapon aimed at marginalising Muslims and usurping their personal laws and property rights”. The LoP added, “This attack on the Constitution by the RSS, BJP and their allies is aimed at Muslims today but sets a precedent to target other communities in the future”.

On April 5, after the Bill had been passed by both Houses of Parliament, Rahul cited a news report headlined ‘RSS focus shifts to Catholic Church land after successful passage of waqf bill in Parliament’ and posted on X, “it didn’t take long for the RSS to turn its attention to Christians”.

Why Priyanka did not attend LS session

Party sources said Priyanka could not attend the session as she was “travelling abroad on an important personal matter and had informed both Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Congress’s chief whip (Kerala MP K Suresh) about this well in advance” but admitted that Rahul’s refusal to participate in the discussion “was a blunder”.

A senior Muslim MP of the Congress told The Federal that the “casual attitude” Rahul and Priyanka showed on the Waqf Bill had “blunted the otherwise strong resistance that our party colleagues put up in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha”.

“Rahul is the LoP. When will he realise that what he says in Lok Sabha carries far more weight than what he writes on Twitter? He should learn from his mother (Sonia Gandhi), who despite her frail health sat till 4 AM in Rajya Sabha to vote against the Bill and also spoke forcefully at our CPP meet against the bulldozing of the Bill in Lok Sabha. Our Congress president (Mallikarjun Kharge), who is 82 years old, spoke against the Bill in the Rajya Sabha and also sat till 4 AM to participate in voting and then also spoke against the Manipur President’s Rule resolution,” the senior party MP said.

He added, “as for Priyanka, one can understand she missed the discussion because she was not in the country but what stopped her from issuing a statement against the Bill on Twitter and explaining her absence? These things matter a great deal in politics but Rahul and Priyanka simply don’t seem to care”.

Congress sources say the Gandhi siblings, perhaps, feel that their personally taking a very aggressive stance against the Waqf Bill would only provide Modi additional fodder to sharpen his ‘Muslim appeasement’ charge against them. As such, the Gandhis prefer second rung leaders of the party, particularly the Muslims, to lead the charge against the Bill.

The Congress’s INDIA bloc partners, however, believe that such an approach is “pointless” as the BJP would “anyway accuse the Congress or any other Opposition party resisting the Waqf Bill of Muslim appeasement”. “If we are fighting for secularism and the Constitution, this is the time when senior leadership of every Opposition party must speak up. You cannot adopt an approach where second and third rung leaders of the party, especially Muslims, are left to speak against this law while you carry on as if nothing has happened. In fact, the best way to battle the BJP’s appeasement charge is to have leaders of different religions, particularly Hindus, to speak up against the Bill as many of us did in Parliament and caution the people that while today the government is interfering in the Muslims’ right to religion and right to property, tomorrow it could be you. But this strategy needs a bold leadership, which unfortunately the Congress lacks now,” said a Trinamool MP.