Overwhelming support for new Waqf Bill, claims Local Circles study

A study of over 47,000 people across 388 districts in India has shown overwhelming support for the new Waqf Bill, Local Circles claimed.

At least 9 out of 10 citizens surveyed expressed support for the bill to amend the Waqf Act and 96% want the Waqf boards to register the Waqf properties with district collectors mandatorily, it said.

The people want to have a say in the use of the properties. The majority of the respondents - 34,540 are Hindus while - 7,213 are Muslims, according to the study.

Local Circles is India's leading community platform and citizen pulse aggregator.

Sachin Taparia, co-founder and CEO of Local Circles said that the survey, Public Pulse on Waqf Bill, will be submitted to the Joint Parliamentary Committee constituted to look at the bill.

“With many citizens expressing their views on Local Circles and other social media platforms, we conducted a national survey seeking citizen response on the subject,” Taparia said.

Over 69% of respondents were men and 31% respondents were women. Among them, 43% of respondents were from tier 1 cities, 26% from tier 2 cities and 31% of respondents were from tier 3, 4, 5, and rural districts.

The survey received 47,149 responses in all. There were 1,508 responses by Christians, and 3,087 responses from people of other religions or unidentified religions.

Additionally, 801 names had only one initial, and hence their religion could not be documented, Local Circles stated.

To a question on whether they supported the proposed amendments in the Waqf Act to make the working of Waqf Boards more transparent, at least 15,951 people with 91% of citizens surveyed express support with the participation of common Muslims, while 8% of respondents stated “no, not at all” and 1% did not give a clear response.

Expressing support to the proposed amendment that requires Waqf boards to register their properties with the district collectors mandatorily, 96% of the total 15,850 respondents said they must be registered, while 4% said no.

Another question posed was whether the disputes involving Waqf property be tried by the Waqf tribunals or through the district courts, high courts, and Supreme Court. The question elicited 15,348 responses, of which 93% said that they should go through the regular court system, 6% respondents stated otherwise and 1% of respondents choose not to give a clear answer.

The Bill was introduced in the last session of Parliament, and due to an uproar among the Opposition parties and NDA allies, the BJP government formed a JPC chaired by BJP Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Jagdambika Pal to evaluate the legislation. Two meetings of the committee held so far have witnessed fireworks among Opposition MPs and BJP members.