A joint parliamentary committee on Monday cleared the contentious waqf amendment bill, adopting 14 changes proposed by BJP members and rejecting over 400 amendments pushed by the Opposition, using the power of majority.

The Opposition accused panel chairman Jagdambika Pal of flouting rules and procedures to shut out the Opposition members in his rush to clear the bill. The ruling side had 16 members on the panel against 10 from the Opposition.

“Our (the Opposition’s) amendments were moved by the chairman, the headcounts were done by him, and the announcement was also done by him,” A. Raja of the DMK told reporters.

“So, he (Pal) is the mover, counter, announcer.... Such a mockery of democracy was held today.”

Raja alleged that clause-by-clause discussions were not held over the bill.

“Jagdambika Pal did not allow discussions at all…. Our (the Opposition’s) amendments were rejected and theirs (the ruling side’s) were passed,” Trinamool Congress MP and House panel member Kalyan Banerjee said.

Pal rejected, by hand count, the 400-plus amendments moved by the Opposition members. All the 14 amendments moved by the BJP members were adopted.

The chairman rejected the Opposition’s charges, accusing them of pursuing a “political agenda”.

“This was our final meeting after wide-ranging discussions with all the stakeholders. All the 14 amendments were accepted by the committee based on a majority. All the amendments moved by the Opposition were also put to vote and rejected based on majority,” Pal told reporters.

The panel’s approval clears the decks for its report to be tabled in Parliament during the budget session, which begins on January 31.

The nearly 500-page report will be circulated among the panel members on Tuesday and adopted thereafter on Wednesday. The Opposition members will get the opportunity to forward dissent notes that will be included in the final report.

A waqf property is an endowment made by a Muslim for a religious, educational or charitable cause, and cannot be taken over for other purposes, according to a 1995 Act.

The bill moved by the Narendra Modi government proposes 44 amendments that would significantly reduce the waqf board’s power to designate properties as waqf properties.

Tabled in the Lok Sabha last August, the bill was referred to the JPC for scrutiny. The 14 amendments moved by BJP members of the House panel suggest tweaks to the 44 amendments proposed by the government.

The government can include all or some of the amendments proposed by the JPC, or ignore all of them, in the bill it brings before Parliament for approval.

Among the key amendments proposed by the government is one that requires the waqf boards’ property claims to undergo a mandatory verification. The amendments give the district magistrates the authority to determine whether a property is waqf property, and put women and non-Muslims in the apex waqf council.

The Opposition argues that these amendments amount to interference in the religious affairs of Muslims. The amendments proposed by Opposition members of the House panel tried to counter the moves to include non-Muslims in the waqf council and empower the district magistrates to decide on waqf properties.

Sources said that one of the amendments adopted by the House committee proposes that instead of the district magistrate, a designated officer of the state government be assigned the task of determining whether a property is waqf property.

“The chairman bulldozed everything and ended the meeting in 1.5 hours…. This new law will completely ruin (the institution of) waqf. It’s an attempt by the government to seize waqf properties,” Congress MP Nasir Hussain, a member of the House panel, said.

The government is expected to push the waqf amendment bill through during the budget session.

In the evening, 11 Opposition MPs released a joint statement underlining“willful and wanton disregard” by the JPC chairperson and appealed to the people to come forward to preserve the “secular credentials and to protect the rights of minorities”.

The statement highlighted that “during the proceedings, in entirety 95% of the stakeholders” had deposed against the bill. They alleged that the “minutes of the sittings held in Delhi and other places were not supplied to the members” and that “no clause-by-clause discussion was permitted, which is the essential element in the process”.