To blunt any adverse impact that the Waqf (Amendment) Act can have on their electoral fortunes, the Janata Dal (United) and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) –– part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) –– have begun an outreach in Bihar to allay concerns about the provisions of the revised law. Leaders of both parties, however, assert that the outreach has been designed to prevent communal unrest in the poll-bound state rather than with an eye on elections.
Bihar will elect a new assembly later in the year and both parties are part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA that will contest the polls as a coalition.
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The opposition’s charge that the provisions of the new law are “unconstitutional” and impinge on the rights of Muslims has precipitated the outreach by the JD(U) and the LJP in their respective strongholds. The BJP too has begun an outreach to counter the narrative against the law t that came into force on Tuesday.
A clutch of petitioners have approached the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutional validity of the Act, which received the President’s assent on April 5. The petitioners includer AIMIM leaders and Lok Sabha MPs Asaduddin Owaisi and Mohammad Jawed; the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML); Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) lawmaker A Raja; Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Amanatullah Khan and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB).
With the opposition –– the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) accusing the JDU and the LJP of supporting the BJP’s agenda, both parties are trying to burnish their secular credentials.
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Muslims are about 18% of the electorate in Bihar and can sway outcome in about 40 seats of the total 243. In 2020 only 19 Muslim legislators were elected of which eight were from the RJD, five from the AIMIM, four from the Congress and one each from the BSP and CPI(M).
The JD(U), which has been in power in the state since 2015 in various formations, is keen to project chief minister Nitish Kumar as the state’s “secular face”. A senior party leader said the outreach is to “save the social fabric” of the state and accused the opposition of driving a “communal agenda”.
“The CM’s commitment to secularism and to protecting the rights of the minorities is well established by the fact that the state has not seen communal flare-ups in the last five years. Barring one instance, when law and order was breached and curfew had to be imposed, the state has protected the rights of the minorities,” added this leader, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The instance that the leader was referring to was from 2017, when a procession led by a BJP leader’s son that was not permitted by the authorities flared unrest in Bhagalpur.
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Responding to the RJD’s jibe that the JDU was forcing its Muslim leaders to speak in favour of the law, the party leader quoted above said, “Tejasvi Yadav (the RJD leader) has not been able to pinpoint which provisions of the new act are oppressive or unconstitutional.
“Their party has always played the caste and minority card, the MY combination (Muslims+Yadavs) and they are continuing to create fear,” this person added.
The JDU also claimed it was the RJD that was “creating fear” to regain the Muslim votes. “In the assembly elections (2020), RJD fielded 17 Muslim candidates but only eight won. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls both their (Muslim) candidates lost …, so they are losing out on the M-factor,” the leader said.
To be sure, none of the 11 Muslim candidates fielded by the JD(U) won in 2020, although the party had five Muslim legislators in 2015.
The JDU is also downplaying the resignation of at least half a dozen Muslim leaders who have chosen to quit in protest.
“There are all shades of opinion in a party and people are free to express their concerns…We are clear that the law will serve the Pasmanda Muslims who have been neglected and serve the purpose of creating the Waqf in the first place. And this sits well with our party’s ideology of empowerment of the pichda and the atipichda (backward and the most backward),” said a second JD(U) leader who too asked not to be named.
The LJP too is echoing similar views and claims that the rights of the Muslims, particularly those on the fringes will be protected.
Party chief Chirag Paswan, who is also a Union minister, has been referring to his late father Ram Vilas Paswan’s 2005 statement of supporting a Muslim CM for Bihar as proof of the party’s secular credentials. And it is continuing to woo Muslims.
“We did not support the bill without due diligence…It was our leader (Paswan) who demanded that the bill be sent to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for further discussion. We ensured that the amendments moved by us were part of the final document…all this was done to ensure that the rights of the minorities were protected,” said party’s senior vice president AK Bajpai.
The LJP too has posed questions to the opposition about why the law (amended in 2013) failed to serve “the widows, divorcees and orphans” in the community.
“The altruistic provisions of the Waqf were not met, only the influential and the rich benefitted. This is why the government had to amend the law, and this is the message that what we will go to the Pasmanda Muslims with,” Bajpai added.
A second LJP leader said the amendment is unlikely to alter the state’s political scenario, which will continue to be dominated by caste.
“More than religion, it is caste that matters in Bihar. Although in 2020, AIMIM managed to gain five seats and created some buzz on the ground, we are not expecting a shift in how Bihar votes,” this person added, asking not to be named.