Speaker calls off Parl Waqf panel’s study tour midway
Speaker Om Birla on Monday called off midway the ongoing tour of the joint parliamentary panel on Waqf Bill to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Odisha.
The decision came just days after opposition MPs had urged him to postpone the tour, saying that there was no hurry for the panel to submit its report on the controversial Bill.
The tour, which had commenced on November 9 and was to continue till November 14, was “postponed” by the Lok Sabha Secretariat through a letter issued on Monday.
In the letter to the chairperson of the joint panel, BJP MP Jagdambika Pal, the Lok Sabha Secretariat asked him to postpone the remaining part of the study tour to Kolkata, Patna and Lucknow from November 12 to November 14. The panel had visited Guwahati and Bhubaneswar between November 9 and November 11.
Opposition MPs, led by Congress Lok Sabha MP Mohammad Jawed, had met Birla on November 5, urging him to defer the study tour, and had also requested him to postpone the deadline of the submission of the joint panel’s report on the Bill.
On November 9, the opposition MPs had announced that they would not be participating in the tour of the joint panel as a mark of protest. Finally, only five of the 31 members proceeded on the tour.
