The false depiction of Waqf

The Bharatiya Janata Partyrsquos BJP narrative that the state waqf boards can appropriate any property by declaring it as waqf is patently false This narrative is based on a deliberate misrepresentation of Section 40 of the 1995 Waqf Act which the new law on Muslim endowments has omittedTo begin with the first principle of waqf is that an individual must dedicate hisher personal property to God in perpetuity for specific religious or charitable purposes The dedication is recorded in the waqf deed that the mutawalli or the waqf manager must present to the board when applying for registering hisher waqf Section 36 of the 1995 Act still intact in the new law lays out an elaborate process for registering a waqfAnother method of registration was under Section 40 which empowered the board to ldquoitself collect information regarding any property which it has reason to believerdquo is waqf After collecting the information through an inquiry the board could declare a property as waqf The boardrsquos decision could be challenged in the Waqf Tribunal whose order the high court could reviewThe BJP has misconstrued ldquoany propertyrdquo in Section 40 to portray the board as a land mafia I spoke to several board members all of whom said they invoked Section 40 for only those properties that were listed in revenue recordsmdashfor instance as mosques graveyards etcmdashbut were not registered with the boardOr they did so for the properties in the category of waqfbyuser that is spaces used by Muslims for religious and charitable purposes from ldquotime immemorialrdquo Their deeds canrsquot be traced because of the antiquity of such properties or were not executed at all For instance a person might have constructed a mosque on hisher land but didnrsquot create a waqf deed in hisher lifetime Ajit Singh Sodhi in his Waqf Laws In India says the definition of ldquotime immemorialrdquo has differed from one judge to anotherLook at these statistics Waqf boards in Odisha Uttar Pradesh Madhya Pradesh and Assam have never invoked Section 40 to declare a property as waqf Bihar registered one an orphanage on the high courtrsquos order Rajasthan has 88 but all these were listed in revenue records Its board sought clearances from local bodies and also called for objections from the public None of Andhra Pradeshrsquos 175 such waqf properties is under litigation During the last 15 years Kerala declared approximately 590 properties as waqf under Section 40mdashand invoked Section 41 that allows the board to register them on its own Of these less than 20 have been judicially challenged Such challenges however donrsquot rule out malevolence as the challengerrsquos motivationTake Munambam where 600 familiesmdashmostly Christian and dependent on fishingmdashare threatened with eviction because as Union Minister Kiren Rijiju recently alleged the Kerala Waqf Board decided to claim 400 acres there as waqf I accessed the Boardrsquos legal note and discovered a side of the Munambam controversy not well known In 1950 the land was created as waqf by M S Sait through a waqf deed and the Farooq College Managing Committeersquos secretary was made its mutawalli The committee in 1967 moved the Subordinate Judges Court Paravoor claiming that since the 400 acres were constituted as waqf 18 illegal occupiers there should be evictedThe Subordinate Judges Court upheld the plea against which an appeal was filed in the high court Dismissing the appeal the high court reiterated that the deed was indeed waqf Years later the committee began claiming that the 400 acres were gifted to it As another round of litigations began a chunk of the property was allegedly sold to private parties In 2019 the Board asked the committee to register the property under Section 36 It didnrsquot prompting the board to invoke Sections 40 and 41 for registering the land now dotted with homestaysHaryana has 106 properties registered through Section 40 Punjab 160 Himachal Pradesh 26 and Chandigarh none These havenrsquot been judicially challenged The story of this region is unique During Partition the Muslims of Punjab migrated to Pakistan from where nonMuslims flocked into India They were assigned or took over evacuee and waqf properties left behind by MuslimsAfter the Punjab Board was established in 1960 Commissioner S C Dhosiwal carried out a survey between 1963 and 1969 to identify waqf properties which were then notified in the gazette The board issued licences to occupants of mosques for token amounts and leased out waqf agricultural land and urban properties in order not to lose its ownership over them This was a wiser alternative to evicting the occupants through litigation The Punjab Waqf Board was split in 2003 into four separate boards for the three states and Chandigarh These boards invoke Section 40 for those properties they find mentioned in prePartition revenue records and for declaring as waqf mosques built in recent yearsInvoking law isnrsquot always the Boardrsquos method At Subhanpur Kapurthala a mosque had been converted into a gurdwara which subsequently came into an individualrsquos possession He acceded to the boardrsquos request to vacate it The mosque is functional nowmdasha befitting riposte to the BJPrsquos canard that waqf boards appropriate places of worship of other communitiesThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params