Members of the PKV Wakf Bill leave the meeting and return later

Monday’s meeting was the first since Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Kalyan Banerjee was suspended for a day following an incident in which he allegedly broke a glass bottle during a heated altercation with BJP member Abhijit Gangopadhyay. Following the incident, BJP members called for a criminal case to be filed against Banerjee and for him to be disqualified from participating in parliamentary hearings. Notably, Banerjee was not present at Monday’s meeting.

The committee’s agenda included taking oral evidence from the Waqf Boards of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Uttarakhand. In the afternoon, the committee was scheduled to hear from a panel of former High Court and Supreme Court lawyers, Call for Justice, and the Delhi Tenants’ Waqf Welfare Association.

The waqf group has suffered several strikes by opposition MPs in recent weeks. On October 14, members walked out of the meeting after former Karnataka State Minorities Commission chief and BJP leader made remarks against Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge over the allocation of waqf land.

The committee will meet again tomorrow to record oral evidence from the Minority Affairs Ministry regarding the Waqf Bill.