Spokespersons: Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Shri Imran Pratapgarhi: Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that I am going to speak with you about the Waqf Amendment Act of 2025.

What the government is calling a reform is actually an attack on rights. The Wakf Act is not a measure of administrative efficiency, but a fundamental ideological attack. It not only attacks the freedom of religious institutions, but also crushes the self-determination and autonomy of minorities. It presents interference of power as good governance. It is a strange irony, but the Congress Party, as a Party, will not remain silent and will oppose it in every possible way - legally, politically, inside and outside the Parliament.

As I said, it is so against autonomy that it violates all the established judicial principles from the 1950s and 1960s in the name of administrative efficiency. We are not here to defend just one community, don’t treat it as a community specific issue. We are here to defend a constitutional principle. The constitutional principle is that the rights like Article 26 cannot be sacrificed at the altar of majoritarian convenience. People forget that the constitutional rights are rights against the majority, if they were rights for the majority or not against the majority, there will be no need for constitutional rights, what is the need for it? Today, it is the Waqf, friends. Tomorrow, it could be your shrine, your institution, your faith and even your voice. This act is not just legally flawed, it is morally vacant as it takes the soul of religious freedom and stuffs it into a file marked ‘subject to approval’. If this can be done in the name of administrative regulation, then no freedom is safe, and no institution is sacred. This is not the future which framers of our Constitution envisioned and it is not the future which the Congress Party will allow subject to the court orders. Thursday, April 17, 2025