After Madrasas, UP Orders Probe Into Waqf Land; ‘Targeting Muslims’ Says Owaisi

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo: PTI)

The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday, 21 September, revoked a 1989 Revenue Department order under which uncultivated land was “illegally registered” as Waqf property.

The state government has directed all the district magistrates to examine the proceedings taken under the 1989 order and correct the revenue records accordingly. It has sought a report on the same within a month.

Reacting to the development, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Chief Asaduddin Owaisi told news agency ANI that the UP government is “targeting” Waqf property and “trying to snatch it away.”

The Minister of State for Minority Welfare and Waqf, Danish Azad Ansari, has termed the exercise a "normal departmental process" and added that it has nothing to do with the other Waqf properties.

The 1989 order was issued when the Congress was in power in UP with Narayan Datt Tiwari as its chief minister.

Department Deputy Secretary Shakeel Ahmed Siddiqui said that the government noted that there were pieces of barren land that were registered as Waqf property by manipulating the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Muslim Waqf Act, 1960.

Siddiqui said that only those properties come under the category of Waqf which are donated for religious and welfare work according to Muslim law and customs. Meanwhile, Ansari said that likening this exercise to the ongoing survey of private madrasas was not correct.

Calling the exercise "a systemic targeting of Muslims”, Owaisi said that the UP government was violating Article 300A of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the Right to Property.

"Why are you (UP govt) conducting a survey of Waqf properties only? Do it for Hindu Endowments Board properties too. I was saying there's a conspiracy behind madrasas' survey. It's coming to the fore. UP govt is violating Article 300 (Right to Property)."

Asaduddin Owaisi

Survey of Private Madrasas

The Uttar Pradesh government has been conducting a survey to assess the facilities available in all the private madrasas in the state in a bid to "gather information about number of teachers, curriculum, and basic facilities available there, among others."

After UP, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had, last week, ordered a survey of madrasas across the state.