Waqf row lays bare political churn

A parliamentary debate with communal overtones is grist to the BJP’s mill and a challenge to a defensive Opposition, especially if it concerns the rights and interests of India’s largest minority community, the Muslims. The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, which has now been challenged in the Supreme Court, has triggered a political slugfest. The Congress is on the back foot over the absence of its top brass from the debate, while the BJP failed to manage at least one prospective ally, and a crucial one at that, the AIADMK.

For long, the BJP-led NDA lacked a majority in the Rajya Sabha; consequently, ‘neutral’ parties were approached for support, which they willingly offered more often than not for a consideration from the Centre for their states.

Although the BJP’s four main allies in Parliament — the Janata Dal (United), Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) — voted for the Waqf Bill along with smaller entities, despite initial misgivings of the JD(U) and TDP, some of them are facing the anger of their Muslim constituents and members. The BJP has had the last laugh as it has achieved its aim and now left its allies to face the music in their respective states/regions.

However, the AIADMK — on which the BJP has set its sights for a partnership in Tamil Nadu, which goes to the polls next year — voted against the Bill, underscoring its reservations about the BJP’s agenda. Indeed, a key reason why the AIADMK parted ways with the BJP in 2023 was the party’s fear of losing minority votes.

The regional party has only three Rajya Sabha MPs, but in circumstances fraught with uncertainty, the BJP’s ace strategists would normally have used their persuasive skills to get unaligned parties on its side. So, when the Bill was put to vote, the victory margin was narrower than what the BJP expected. After a 14-hour-long debate, 128 members voted in favour and 95 against.

The NDA voted in full strength, but the BJP counted on two other parties apart from the AIADMK to shore up its numbers and project the Opposition as a decimated force — the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress (YSRC). During the NDA’s previous tenures, the BJD and the YSRC, which ruled Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, respectively, till they were dislodged last year, had a warm relationship with the Centre — much to the dismay of the BJP’s state leaders who felt their own interests were being compromised. Their apprehensions were laid to rest after the saffron party defeated the BJD, while the TDP, with the BJP in tow, vanquished the YSRC in the 2024 Assembly elections.

Former Odisha CM and BJD chief Naveen Patnaik did not issue a whip, an indication of a leader not entirely in control of his party. As a result, four of his seven MPs voted with the Opposition, one abstained and two others backed the Bill. The BJD’s plight should open a window for the Congress to revive itself in Odisha and appropriate the Opposition space, but the party is showing no sign of becoming proactive.

The majority of YSRC MPs voted against the Bill, using it as an opportunity to assail the TDP for ‘betraying’ Andhra’s 50 lakh Muslims.

In a bid to show that its backing for the Bill was not unqualified, the TDP urged the Centre to allow states flexibility in the composition of Waqf boards. “This step will ensure the TDP’s dedication to inclusive growth and the welfare of communities,” claimed its Lok Sabha MP Krishna Prasad Tenneti while speaking during the debate. However, the rumblings were already visible on the ground.

On March 27, Muslim invitees boycotted CM N Chandrababu Naidu’s Iftar party after a call from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. His son and Andhra minister Nara Lokesh subsequently lauded the Waqf Bill as a rock-solid legislation that empowered states and safeguarded the interests of less well-off Muslims.

Lokesh’s reaction was in tune with PM Narendra Modi’s commendation of the Bill as a “watershed moment in our collective quest for socio-economic justice…” Clearly, the TDP was in no mood to rock the NDA boat as Naidu was far more concerned about extracting sweetheart deals from Delhi than breaking his head over the likely depletion of the minority votes.

The JD(U) has been hit harder for easing the Bill’s passage because it has an election to fight in Bihar this year. Five of its Muslim leaders quit the party in protest, but the JD(U) underplayed the departures as ‘inconsequential’. JD(U) leader and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar probably reckoned that it was more critical for him to hang on to the BJP now, after his past volte-faces, and profit from its upper-caste votes as well as the votes pooled in by other NDA constituents from the more backward and extremely backward castes than pander to the Muslims.

Therefore, the BJP now has only the AIADMK’s concerns to address. The other allies, particularly those in Bihar, where the NDA is up against the RJD-Congress-CPM-CPI(M-L) alliance, are firmly on board.

The Congress passed up an opportunity in the Rajya Sabha to get unaligned parties on its side. Party president M Mallikarjun Kharge, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House, could have tapped parties like the BJD and the YSRC. The AIADMK is out because the Congress is part of the DMK-helmed grouping. Even then, given that the AIADMK sided with the DMK on the language controversy, a limited strategic regrouping was possible. The Congress does not see the elephants in the room as it is preoccupied with its legends of yore.

The absence of Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from the Waqf debate and Rahul Gandhi’s intervention in the form of an X post and silence in the Lok Sabha prompted the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) to point out, “The Waqf Bill is one of the biggest attacks on Muslims and the country’s secularism from the Sangh Parivar after the Babri incident…” The IUML is a Congress ally in Kerala, where elections will be held next year.

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