JPC On Waqf Bill Violated Parliamentary Procedures' :
TMC MP Mahua Moitra's Plea In Supreme Court Gursimran Kaur Bakshi 10 Apr 2025
The petitioner states that the draft report of the JPC was circulated to the members of the Committee only on January 28, a day before it was to be considered final for adoption on January 29. It is averred that this made it "practically impossible to read [the report]". It is an inviolable rule that upon the Chairperson's approval of the draft report prepared by the Secretariat, copies of such a report are supposed to be 'circulated to members of the Committee well in advance of the date fixed for the consideration of the draft report by the Committee.' (Speaker's Direction 69(1); Kaul and Shakdher, Practice and Procedure of Parliament (2016) p 853).
Further, the petition claims that the dissent notes submitted by the members belonging to the Opposition, who were a part of the JPC, were "unreasonably" and "arbitrarily" redacted from the final report represented before the Parliament on February 13. The Chairperson failed to demonstrate that the redacted submissions and notes used unparliamentary language. The redaction of the dissenting viewpoints and submissions undermined the Parliament's prerogative to consider all the views contained in the report prior to arriving at its independent conclusions during the deliberative process. (Kaul and Shakdher, Practice and Procedure of Parliament (2016) p 854).