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The government is likely to amend the Waqf Act due to reports of misuse by a few powerful Muslim bodies.
NEW DELHI: The government has been considering amending the Waqf Act for a long time due to reports of misuse by a few powerful Muslim bodies. Highly placed government sources told The New Indian that the Waqf Board has been acting like a land mafia in recent times, seizing properties ranging from personal property to government land and even temple lands to gurdwaras. This behaviour is attributed to amendments made to the Wakf Act by the Congress party in 1995 and 2013.
According to government sources, “India allocated the land of Muslims who migrated to Pakistan to the Waqf Boards under the Waqf Board Act of 1954.” They further explained, “In 1995, to compensate for the Babri Masjid demolition of 1991, the PV Narasimha Rao-led Congress government amended the Waqf Board Act, granting Waqf Boards unlimited rights to acquire land.” The sources noted that “Waqf is reportedly the third-largest landowner in India, after the Defence and the Railways.”
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Additionally, government sources pointed out, “In March 2014, just before the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress government gifted 123 prime properties in the national capital to the Delhi Waqf Board.”
It continued by recalling a statement by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said that the first right to India’s resources should go to the minority communities, especially Muslims. Singh made this remark during the launch of the National Waqf Development Corporation Limited in 2014, stating that properties under the Waqf Board could be used for the socio-economic development and benefit of the Muslim community. Government sources questioned whether there had been any accountability regarding the usage of resources by the Waqf Board.
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In 2022, an RTI response revealed that the Delhi government, led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, had allocated over Rs 101 crore of public funds to the Delhi Waqf Board since coming to power in 2015, with Rs 62.57 crore given in 2021 alone.
Kejriwal, in a 2019 statement, controversially claimed, “It is said that the residence of the richest person in this country, located in Mumbai, has been built on Waqf property. I’m not saying right or wrong, but the government of Mumbai can’t do anything about it.” He further stated that if his government were in power, they would have demolished the construction.
