The Plundering Of $14 Billion Waqf Properties In India: Report (X image @sioindia)
Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh: The Madhya Pradesh government authorities bulldozed nearly 250 properties, including homes, shops and a century-old mosque, to clear a sprawling 2.1 hectares (5.27 acres) of land in Ujjain. The land belonged to the Waqf Board. The land was cleared out for the Mahakal Lok Corridor expansion, a $1bn government project surrounding the city’s famous Mahakaleshwar Temple.
“Waqf”, derived from Arabic, refers to moveable or immoveable properties, mosques, schools, graveyards, orphanages, hospitals and even vacant plots, donated by Muslims for religious or charitable purposes to God which are prohibited to transfer, sale, or use for any other purposes.
India has the largest number of Waqf assets in the world, more than 8,72,000 properties, spanning nearly 4,05,000 hectares with an estimated value of about $14.22 billion. The lands are managed by waqf boards in every state and federally-run territory. To put it short, the Waqf board are the country’s largest urban landowners and the third-largest overall, military and railways of the country.
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As per the reports, the Indian parliament is to discuss the amendments to the decades-old Waqf Act this week. The Waqf Act, has reportedly, entrenched more and more power in their hands over the years. The new amendment bill, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP, is assumed to give the government unprecedented control over what happens with waqf properties.
Muslim groups in the India allege that Modi administration is using its parliamentary strength to further marginalise the minority community. Activists and lawyers cite the Ujjain case as an example of a deeper set of problems that were tagging the Waqf Board.
The incident in Madhya Pradesh has caught significant attention owing to political reasons as well. By size, Madhya Pradesh is the second largest state. It has been governed by the BJP for most of the past 22 years. For a brief period in December 2018, to March 2020, Congress party was in power before it lost a majority in the state assembly.
Since when he was appointed as the Chief Minster of the state, the BJP leader Mohan Yadav has been preparing for Kumbh 2028, a Hindu pilgrimage held every 12 years on the banks of the city’s Shipra River. The demolition of waqf properties around the Mahakaleshwar Temple is widely viewed as part of the government’s acquisition of lands for the Kumbh pilgrimage, expected to draw millions of devotees.
According to a media report, a 1985 government document has established that the Ujjain site was a Muslim graveyard where a historic mosque – large enough to accommodate 2,000 devotees – also stood. Over the years, influential builders with political connections illegally sold plots for a residential colony there, resulting in more than 250 permanent structures that were razed in January.
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In June 2023, a revenue department officer in Ujjain objected to the state administration’s plan to take over the waqf land. In his note, the officer wrote that residents had shown him a 1985 gazette notification, proving that it was a waqf land, reported Al Jazeera.
The officer suggested that a “No Objection Certificate” should be obtained from the state waqf board to acquire the land. However, a month later, the Ujjain district administration issued an order, saying there was “no permission required when [land is] acquired for social cause”.
Waqf Board in India are set up under the 1954 Waqf Act, and since then, Muslims have been running the bodies with the help of the government. More laws passed in subsequent years, in 1995 and 2013, under the 1954 Waqf Act.
However, last year, Modi government cleared the draft Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, which proposes 14 amendments to the old law. The proposal was controversial and some of the amendments include the appointment of non-Muslims as waqf board members and mandatory registration of properties deemed to be “waqf” with the district administration.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Supreme Court lawyer Anas Tanwir said that the Ujjain case “reflects a broader national concern of political interference and degradation of waqf lands”. “The management of waqf properties in India has long been plagued by mismanagement and encroachment…The proposed Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 potentially exacerbates the problems”, he added.
Experts points a deliberate decades-old pattern of deliberate dispossession, mismanagement and corruption in the government’s handling of waqf properties, and complain of a systematic diversion of waqf properties by district revenue officials and other authorities, and the widespread illegal occupation and conversion of waqf land to private ownership.
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According to the report, most of Waqf land and properties have been declared non-waqf by the government’s revenue department, the state body that maintains land records and collects taxes on them.
The Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board has conducted two surveys of its properties so far, in the late 1960s and the 1980s, and found that it had control over more than 23,000 properties. It also digitised its records and geotagged them for better identification, the report adds.
However, experts believe that the government’s revenue department has outdated land records, often based on pre-independence surveys. Despite the 1954 Waqf Act making it mandatory for the department to make relevant changes in its land records.
Reportedly, Ujjain had 1,014 waqf properties as per the 1985 gazette, but none of them are listed as waqf assets in revenue records.
“Out of those 1,014 assets, 368 are listed as government-owned, 454 as private, and records for 192 properties are either incomplete or missing entirely,” says a public interest litigation filed in December by Ujjain-based lawyer Aashar Warsi in the Madhya Pradesh high court.
(With inputs form agencies)
