New Delhi (India), February 17: In a letter addressed to Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiran Rijiju, CPI Rajya Sabha MP from Kerala, P Sandosh Kumar, has raised serious concerns over the procedural impropriety in presenting the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Waqf Amendment Bill, 2024.
Kumar has questioned the government’s handling of the parliamentary procedures, alleging that they were arbitrarily derailed. Specifically, he highlighted that when the JPC report was presented to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha on January 30, 2025, dissent notes from certain members were missing. Despite a later Corrigendum being tabled for Annexure IV of the report, the report presented in the Lok Sabha did not reference any such correction, which led to widespread opposition outrage.
He emphasized that the report, uploaded on the Digital Sansad website on February 13, 2025, still did not reflect the modification, describing this as “misrepresentation of facts” that misleads both Parliament and the public. “It is crystal clear that dissent notes were modified as an afterthought; it is neither reflected in the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha nor in the report,” Kumar stated.
Kumar further criticized remarks by the Home Minister in the Lok Sabha, who suggested that the ruling party had no objections to including dissent notes in the report, claiming this reflected an authoritarian stance. He also questioned why a JPC, which is independent of the executive, required the ruling party’s approval to publish its report. “This shows clearly that Parliament’s authority is being undermined by the executive and the ruling party’s undue interference,” he said.
In his letter, the CPI MP stressed that the JPC is a body created by Parliament to examine and report on bills, with presiding officers holding powers over the committee. He also questioned the involvement of Union Cabinet ministers in the report’s proceedings, asserting that ministers should not have a say in the committee’s work. The MP suggested that the ministers’ knowledge of the JPC’s proceedings indicated undue influence by the executive on Parliament’s functioning.
The issue has sparked a broader debate over the independence of parliamentary committees and the role of the executive in legislative processes.