Old video of Owaisi laughing with BJP members viral on social media as him reacting to passage of Waqf Bill

by Shinjinee Majumder

A video showing some members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 sharing a seemingly light-hearted moment is viral on social media with claims that it shows them looking content after the passage of the contentious bill.

The much-debated Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025 was passed in Parliament in the early hours of April 4. An earlier version of the bill, the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 8, 2024, The following day, August 9, 2024, both Houses of Parliament separately agreed to send the bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for review. This committee had 21 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members.

In the viral clip, JPC members across parties including Assaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM); Abhijit Gangopadhyay, Nishikant Dubey, Aparajita Sarangi,
Sanjay Jaiswal,
Dilip Saikia,
D. K. Aruna and Jagadamibika Pal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); Mohibbullah Nadvi of the Samajwadi Party (SP); Mohammad Jawed and Syed Nasir Hussain from Congress and Naresh Ganpat Mhaske of Shiv Sena can be seen along with a few others sharing a laugh.

However, those sharing the viral video particularly targeted Owaisi, who is a vocal critic of the bill.

Also Read: Did Asaduddin Owaisi cry after the Waqf Bill was passed?

Far-Right X account @HPhobiaWatch shared the video with a sarcastic comment that it showed “saviours of democracy and minorities”. “Owaisi had the loudest thahaka” (Translation: Owaisi had the loudest laugh), it also said. (Archive)

Another far-Right user @KreatelyMedia shared the same video and remarked that “internally they were all happy” with the bill. (Archive)

Rishi Bagree, another social media user aligning with right-wing ideology whose posts with misinformation have been fact-checked several times by Alt News, commented that the JPC was celebrating the passage of the Bill with jalebis. (Archive)

Other users also shared the purported video with the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2)

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Fact Check

We broke down the viral clip into several key frames and did a reverse image search on one of them. This led us to a video shared by news agency ANI on January 29, 2025. According to the caption, the video showed members of the JPC interacting with Jagadambika Pal, the committee chairperson.

We also found a PTI video of the same interaction on the same date, captioned “Members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee scrutinising the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, meet over tea after it adopted the draft report.”

PTI photos of the interaction were also used by media outlets that reported on the JPC meeting preceding it, in which some Opposition members objected to the proposed omission of a clause on ‘waqf by user’ in the bill.

PTI photo taken from The Telegraph report

Thus, the video of JPC members sitting together is from January 29, two months before the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025 was passed. Claims by social media users implying the clip shows dubious reactions of critics like Owaisi soon after the bill’s passage are false.

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About the Author

Student of Economics at Presidency University. Interested in misinformation.