The Congress spokesman said the BJP leaders want to keep contentious issues alive to hide the shortcomings of the party’s rule
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – The main Opposition, Congress, has slammed BJP MP Nishikant Dubey for raising concerns over the massive feedback received by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill.
In a letter to the JPC chairperson Jagdambika Pal, Dubey said there should be a probe into the role of organisations and individuals and foreign powers such as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), China and their proxies in the massive submissions.
The Congress said Dubey’s claim clearly shows the ruling BJP does not believe in democracy.
Asked about the issue at a press meet at AICC headquarters here on Wednesday, Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said: “They do not believe in democracy. If in such a big country, only 1.5% of the people express their opinion and they (BJP) are pained by it, then it is clear that they don’t believe in democracy.”
Gohil said the “BJP’s minions” were sending drafts on WhatsApp groups and asking people to click on links to send feedback to the committee.
“Probably the impact of that may have been felt by Nishikant ji. So Nishikant ji’s voice should be heard by his party.
“He should have been made a minister but was not made… he must have seen the BJP people getting such fake campaigns run so he would have flagged it,” Gohil said.
The Congress Rajya Sabha MP said the BJP leaders want to keep contentious issues alive to hide the shortcomings of the party’s rule.
“People are worried over unemployment. There is rampant corruption taking place, so they divert attention to Hindu-Muslim issues from the real issues. Though people are innocent, they can see through the game of the BJP,” he said.
Dubey raised a political storm after he expressed concern that more than one crore suggestions had been received by the JPC. Dubey is also part of the committee.
In his letter, he said the geographical origin of these submissions needed immediate attention, claiming that it was statistically improbable that such an overwhelming response could emerge organically from within India alone.
He described the enormity of feedback as “unprecedented”, which, had set a global record for legislative submissions; and invited scrutiny over the motivations and sources behind these communications. Referring to media reports, he said the content of a large portion of these submissions was identical or contained minor variations, signalling that many of them might be part of an organised campaign.
Dubey added that the influence of Islamist preacher Zakir Naik couldn’t be underestimated, adding that there were credible concerns that Naik and his network might be involved in orchestrating the deluge of submissions.
More than 1 crore suggestions on Waqf Bill jam email ID of the panel. Sources aware of the developments said due to the sheer quantity of suggestions, the inbox of the panel’s email ID had been jammed, with thousands of emails with heavy attachments as feedback lying in the spam mail section of the mail ID.
