Waqf JPC chief defends travel as opposition says lack of ‘quorum’ | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Opposition MPs inside Joint Parliamentary Committee inquiry into the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 have written to LS Chairman Om Birla expressing their dismay that despite their meeting with him regarding the functioning of the panel and assurance that complaints will be addressed, JPC chairman Jagdambika Pal has continued state travel, sources said. Opposition MPs have boycotted the five-state tour.
They have alleged that tours led by Pal lack quorum, an accusation he has refuted by saying that “study tours” by parliamentary panels are an informal exercise and not bound by formalities such as meeting the quorum.
In a communication to Birla on November 9, some opposition MPs said after their meeting on November 5 that they were hopeful that the JPC tour led by Pal could be postponed as there was no “immediate urgency” to review the report of to submit to the panel, sources said.
Those who have written to the speaker include DMK’s A Raja, Congress’s Mohammad Jawed and TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee, sources said.
The MPs are said to have said that to their ‘complete surprise’ when they discovered that the tour which started on November 9 had not been postponed by JPC, they thought it wise to boycott it, according to sources.
The panel chairman told PTI on Sunday that he is confident of meeting the deadline for tabling the committee report on the last day of the first week of the winter session of Parliament.