NDA allies in Bihar face ire, tough questions of Muslims after SC order on Waqf Act

In April this year, amid raging protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Bill by Muslim organisations and warning bells by legal luminaries and Opposition leaders over the draft legislation’s adverse ramifications, senior JD(U) MP and Union Minister Rajeev Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ rose in Lok Sabha to emphatically endorse the proposed law.

Lalan’s strident criticism of Opposition members who dubbed the Bill as “unconstitutional” and his own assertion that the proposed law would bring much-needed reform in the administration of waqf properties triggered an immediate backlash from sections within the JD(U) itself. Over the next few days, as the Bill was passed by Parliament, the JD(U) suffered a wave of resignations, primarily from Muslim leaders of the party with varying seniority and political heft.

Also read: Waqf Act: SC pauses contentious powers, but Centre not out of play

Bill triggered resignations, rifts in JD(U)

With Assembly polls due in Bihar later this year, many JD(U) leaders cautioned their party leadership against giving unqualified support for the Bill. Nearly a dozen office bearers, former MLAs and MPs quit the JD(U), claiming that the party, which despite its alliance with the BJP had never shied away from speaking up for Muslims, had either “lost its way” or “been hijacked by people of BJP-RSS mindset”. In the run-up to the Bill being moved for passing in Parliament, a large number of Muslim organisations in the state had warned Chief Minister and JD(U) boss Nitish Kumar against supporting the Bill.

Similar warnings were also issued to smaller but crucial constituents of the NDA in Bihar, such as Lok Janshakti Party-Ram Vilas (LJP-RV) chief Chirag Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) chief Upendra Kushwaha, both Union ministers who have tried to keep the delicate balance between supporting the BJP and cultivating Bihar’s over 17 per cent Muslim electorate that is demonised in different ways by the saffron party. None of these appeals and warnings, however, had any impact on Nitish, Paswan, and Kushwaha.

SC order, uneasy silence in NDA camp

On Monday, (September 15), as the Supreme Court granted an interim stay on the implementation of some crucial provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act, albeit while refusing the stay the implementation of the Act in its entirety, an uneasy silence consumed these three NDA constituents in poll-bound Bihar.

Watch: SC ruling on Waqf Act : 'This is a win; draconian parts stayed' | Interview

In the months following the enactment of the amended waqf law, the JD(U), LJP-RV and RLM had breathed easy. Protests against the Act had been overtaken by the political cacophony over the Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent Operation Sindoor, the latter of which these parties believed would crystallise the NDA’s splintering votes again around the narrative of jingoistic nationalism assiduously pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

However, even as the NDA was trying to find ways of encashing the post-Sindoor sentiment with simultaneous attempts at dumbing down the Centre’s India-Pakistan ceasefire fiasco, the special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls reignited unrest against the Nitish Kumar-led government.

Seeds of distrust

The narrative in Bihar had been driven back towards the further othering of marginalised communities, of which the Muslims form a substantial chunk. The inability of the JD(U) and other smaller NDA allies to launch even a token resistance against the SIR amplified the distrust that Bihar’s Muslims, particularly from the Seemanchal region, where the JD(U) competes directly for Muslim votes with the RJD and the Congress. This distrust was seen among voters against the BJP allies since the enactment of the amended Waqf law, believe several JD(U) and LJP-RV leaders The Federal spoke to after the Supreme Court’s verdict on Monday.

Also read: Muslim bodies welcome SC’s Waqf Act verdict but call it ‘incomplete’

‘NDA allies' silence admission of guilt’

The silence of Nitish, Paswan, and Kushwaha on the apex court’s waqf verdict was an “admission of guilt” over supporting a law that the Muslim community is riled up against, said leaders from their parties. The verdict brings the waqf law back into political discourse, removing the diversion that Operation Sindoor had provided. Worse, it now poses the added risk of the Opposition’s Grand Alliance projecting the SIR and the waqf law as one composite issue in Muslim-dominated pockets of Bihar, a strategy that sources in the Congress and RJD told The Federal was being explored, to suggest that while the waqf law was NDA’s assault on their freedom of religion, the SIR was meant to target their citizenship and all other fundamental rights that flow from it.

Tough questions

Sources in the JD(U) said the party expects more resignations of its Muslim leaders in the days to come, and as it has “no credible ground” to assure them that Nitish will protect their interests. Asserting that Muslims play a crucial role in deciding a candidate’s fate in at least 50 of the state’s 243 Assembly constituencies, JD(U) insiders concede that the party will find it difficult to retain its hold on several of these seats in the forthcoming polls.

Both JD(U) and LJP-RV leaders admit that with the apex court now reading down parts of the Waqf Act it would be “all the more difficult to explain to the electorate why we supported the Act”. For now, sources in the NDA said parties such as the JD(U) and the LJP are “unlikely to engage” with the issue of the Supreme Court’s verdict and would “follow the BJP’s cue” as far as the poll campaign’s rhetoric is concerned.

Also read: Dynasty dilemma plagues Nitish as partymen want son Nishant to take the lead

Does BJP have a counter strategy?

A section of the JD(U) believes that the BJP would use the Waqf Act, among other issues, to deepen communal polarisation in the state with claims of Hindu properties being taken over illegally through waqf claims and by projecting the SIR as a means to “weed out infiltrators”.

A senior NDA leader from the state said the strategy could offset the damage that the alliance is likely to face in Muslim-dominated Seemanchal and some other seats by increasing the ruling coalition’s victory prospects in North Bihar, Tirhut, Ang, and Magadh regions of Bihar, where communal polarisation has worked well for the NDA in the past.