Keypoints:
- Digitalization of Waqf Board properties in the state is likely to begin.
- Information of all Waqf properties, land plots, properties on rent, disputed properties, tribunal cases and their status will soon be a click away.
On Monday, a meeting headed by Nawab Malik, state minorities development and Waqf minister was held in the city. The officials from the Waqf Board and state IT department also attention the meeting.
“I asked the officials to bring all records online. The IT department will give quotations, software will be prepared and the process to get Waqf-related information will also begin. We are trying to start the online process in two months,” said Malik.
The software will also have a GIS facility to check the location of the property. No exact number of Waqf property nor their value is available. ” We are trying to compile data about the Waqf properties and related subjects. More than 6,000 applications are pending for registering Waqf properties. Around 1,600 were cleared in the last one year,” Malik added.
Maharashtra Board Revenue Department has directed that all immovable Waqf properties which have been illegally transferred, sold or leased, be taken back and re-registered as Waqf property.
” All the encroached Waqf properties either illegally sold or leased out shall be re-registered as Waqf property or in the name of Waqf institution,” stated a Government Resolution (GR) issued here recently.
The state government’s move comes in the wake of findings of the A T A K Shaikh committee, appointed in October 2007, which observed that many Waqf properties were illegally sold or given on lease.
As per the online data available with the Maharashtra State Waqf Board, there are 23,566 listed Waqf properties admeasuring 37,330.97 hectares in the state.
Khalid Babu Qureshi, a member of the Maharashtra State Waqf Board said that the process of digitisation has started in the state, and it would help free encroached land in Pune, Solapur and Nashik. The State Waqf Board currently has one lakh acres of land.
As of now if one goes to see there are no safety measures to protect Waqf properties, which is why politicians and big industrialists encroach upon it. The state government also doesn’t use stringent measures in these cases. If the details go online, it will help in future to know the exact amount of these properties. These funds with Waqf Board can then be used for the welfare of Muslim community,” Qureshi said.
Qureshi added that the Waqf Act, 1995 states “once a Waqf property, always a Waqf property.”
