Parliament panel on Waqf Bill receives over 120 million responses

A parliamentary panel examining the Waqf (Amendment) Bill has received a staggering 1.2 crore email responses amid campaigns launched by rival groups to ratchet up support for their respective viewpoints regarding the draft law.

Parliamentary sources said the Joint Committee on the Waqf Amendment Bill, chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jagadambika Pal, has also received 75,000 responses with documents to support the respective views, prompting the panel to seek additional staff from the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

"We have deployed 15 additional personnel to go through the email responses and categorise and document those," one of the sources said.

Radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik has appealed to his supporters to oppose the Waqf (Amendment) Bill by sending responses to the parliamentary panel examining the draft law.

The appeal from Naik has triggered a counter-reaction and several Hindu groups too have urged their supporters to write emails to the committee in support