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On Wednesday afternoon, in a Lok Sabha thick with protest, a minister of state rose and moved that the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 be referred to a joint committee of both Houses. Thirty-one members. Twenty-one from the Lok Sabha, nominated by the speaker. Ten from the Rajya Sabha, nominated by the chairman. The report is due by the last day of the first week of the winter session.

The home minister, whose ministry drafted the Bill, was not in the House to move his own motion. K.C. Venugopal asked where he was. Kiren Rijiju told the opposition it should welcome the referral, and said there was not a single provision in the Bill that targets minorities.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

I welcome the referral. I want to be precise about what I am welcoming. I have watched this procedure before and I know what it can be made to do.

Two years ago the Waqf (Amendment) Bill went to a joint committee of exactly this size. That committee worked. It sat for more than 125 hours, travelled to ten cities and took in close to a crore of memoranda from the public. That is a volume of civic participation which ought to have settled the matter.

It adopted its report by 15 votes to 11. Every opposition amendment was defeated on party lines. The dissent notes of the minority members were redacted, and a corrigendum restoring parts of them was tabled only after those members protested in public. The government........

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