Chinks in BJP’s intellectual armour in Tripura comes to the fore, empty rhetoric on new Waqf bill

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, April 13, 2025

The gaping chinks in the armour of Tripura BJP has come to the fore with the inability of the party’s brain trust to properly defend the recent legislation on the new Waqf bill-2025 in parliament. At the national level the party ruling the Centre and a number of states can legitimately boast of a brigade of shining intellectuals and spokespersons who can eloquently justify the need for a Waqf bill amendment ,putting the opposition spokespersons on the defensive. The battery of BJP spokespersons such as Dr Sudhangshu Trivedi , Shehzad Punewala, Sanju Verma, Nalin Kohli , Radhika Khera et al are so well informed and educated that the baying opposition spokespersons simply sound hollow in argument with them in TV talk shows.

But in Tripura there does not seem to be anybody capable of properly defending the much-needed Waqf amendment bill as evident from the riotous situation created by ignorant Muslims operating under the banner of Congress and CPI (M) on the false and misguided assumption that the amended new Waqf bill will take away minority rights which is a wicked myth. The situation is similar to what happened at the time of introduction and passage of the CAA in the parliament in 2019-2020 when riots had been triggered in Delhi by the Muslims misguided by the bankrupt and rotten Congress that had spread the myth that CAA would deprive citizenship rights of the Muslims. More than five years have passed and not a single Muslim has lost citizenship and other rights because of the CAA-in fact the CAA does not even refer to the Muslim minorities. But the lesson seems to have been lost upon them.

The Waqf Act, passed by Indian parliament and amended in 1995 and 2013, had given extra-constitutional status to the Waqf Boads and Councils by empowering them to claim right over any landed property including national monuments like the ‘Taj Mahal’ without any documentary evidence. Such outrageous claims were also to be adjudicated by the Waqf council and there was no scope for appeal to the civil court which was a direct violation of several articles of the constitution including the crucial Article 14 (right to equality before law). With this cushion provided by the shamelessly ultra-secular and vote-crazy appeasers of Congress, the land mafia of the Waqf had the temerity to claim land of the parliament, ‘Kumbh’ land in Prayagraj, a fifteen hundred yearold temple n Tamil Nadu that had come up even before the birth of Islam, Calcutta’s Eden Garden and even Church land in Kerala.Unfortunately the beneficiaries of these perfidies and land ‘Jihad’ are a handful of rich Muslim leaders and land mafia, not ordinary or poor Muslims for whom the Waqf land is meant to be used. A number of sections of the old Waqf act like section-40,104,108 etc needed to be simply thrown away for the sake of constitutional and legal propriety and right of all citizens. Most bizarrely , by the 2013 amendment the then bankrupt and corrupt-to-the-bone UPA government led by Congress had handed over 123 prime land and buildings in the heart of Delhi to Waqf mafia only to create illusory goodwill among the Muslims by appeasement . By that time the bankrupt and thoroughly corrupt Congress leaders had realized that they could not win the Loksabha elections of 2014.

Hence the amendment of the Waqf Act was long overdue. But the BJP intellectual trust in Tripura as well as the spokespersons seem to singularly ignorant of the reality and incapable of defending the amendment act of 2025. Moreover the amendment had been passed after the second long debate in the history of Indian parliament and after 32 meeting of the JPC to which more than a crore people had sent in their written representations supporting the proposed amendment. Informed sources here said that the BJP leadership here including the spokespersons should first study the Waqf Act amendments of 1995 and 2013 , make a comparative study of the sections and sub-sections to understand the justification for the amendment and then explain the same to the people, specially minorities being misled by the mischievous Congress and CPI (M). Most significantly, the Christian Bishops Council of Kerala had appealed to all the opposition parties in parliament to support the amendment to the Waqf Act and this is the reason why the Gandhi family company comprising Sonia , Rahul did not deliver speeches on the issue in parliament while Priyanka stayed away from Loksabha to avoid giving a speech opposing it as all of them are Christians. Now it remains to be seen whether the BJP in Tripura, specially its spokesperson wake up to the reality as part of an attempt to douse the fire sought to be lit up in Sonamura and Kailasahar by inimical forces backed by Congress and CPI (M).

more news...