In a blatant violation of the Indian Constitution, the Telangana’s Minister for Minority Welfare Koppula Eshwar has promised the Muslim community that the Telangana government will be securing the WAQF board properties across the state and soon the government will hold a meeting with all the stakeholders regarding the delay in gazette notification of the details of the second survey of the WAQF Properties.
He also assured the government is all set to confer the judicial status to Wakf Board, as CM is considering this option after this meeting. It’s like setting up a parallel Kangaroo court governed by the Sharia laws, which is an open challenge to the Indian Constitution and the legal system.
Minister Eshwar, while answering the question raised by AIMIM Leader Akbaruddin Owaisi during a question hour in Assembly, said that the first survey undertaken in 1954 has identified that 77,539 acres of land in 3929 areas have been identified as WAQF properties. However, the second survey that began in 2001 and ended in 2016 has identified that the Wakf has left with 3,372 acres of land in 13,610 areas.
While agreeing to the delay in publishing the gazette, he put the blame on the several objections during the verification process which leads to this delay. Telangana government is working with IIT Roorkee to digitize the demarcation process and to geo-tag all WAQF properties. He assured the Muslim community members that the government will call for a meeting to discuss all the issues so that the gazette notification can be given at the earliest.
Here, it is important to note that the actual count of the WAQF properties is not known after the recent digitalization drive of the entire property records under the Telangana government. Now, after a recent check, it was found that there is a huge difference between the facts and the actual figures on the ground. There is an urgent need to order an inquiry on this matter and to unveil the enquire about the facts about these irregularities by an independent sitting judge panel.
And it’s not a propaganda or misinformation campaign by the opposition, anyone can visit the official website of the Telangana WAQF Board and can view the discrepancies about the WAQF board properties on his own. According to the statistics on the website, the state Waqf board has 33,929 institutions located across several districts in the state.
As per the Government’s estimates, the WAQF holds 77,538.07 acres worth of land. But out of this, 57,423.91 acres have been illegally encroached upon. This means, almost 75% of the total properties that WAQF holds, have been encroached upon. Waqf institutions include Graveyards, Dargahs, Mosques, Chillas, ashoorkhanas, and takias.
Chief Executive Officer of the State WAQF Board, Mohd Qasim gave an excuse that this is happening due to the lack of staff in the WAQF board. He added that “We have only 96 regular staff out of a total of over 300 positions. We now hire staff on a daily wage and contract basis for the work to be carried out. We have requested the state government for permission to hire more staff that has been long pending.”
He further tried to cover up this matter and accused that “The statistics available are from 2014-2015. The data is from the first survey carried out in the 1960s and ’70s. It was published in 1989. The second survey was carried out but it wasn’t published because of pending permissions.”
It’s not the first time Telangana Government is accused of taking biased approach and working towards a specific community only, and in process they have violated many constitutional provisions as well. The Telangana government has already passed a bill on to increase reservation in jobs and education for Muslims to 12%, which exceeds the Supreme Court’s 50% ceiling for such reservation based benefits.
Telangana Government was among the first one, which passed a resolution against CAA,NRC and NPR exercise, all to make their ‘Vote Bank’ happy and contain them.
Telangana Government and Police have been accused of pushing Muslim youth to join dreaded terrorist organization ISIS. This malicious act was exposed by Congress leader Digvijay Singh.
The question here is, what Telengana Government and Chief Minister Rao wants to achieve by doing such a massive appeasement? We are in opinion that such appeasements only prove counter productive and detrimental for social harmony and welfare.
Now by providing more tooth and assigning the judicial status to WAQF board, the Telangana government is actually fanning the board and providing it extra-judicial powers to make it another power center in the state. Such practices may fulfil Rao’s political ambitions now, but this will hurt the social harmony of the state very soon.
Here it is extremely important to know that multiple Muslim bodies in India have been pushing their political masters to enact the pro-Muslim laws and implement Sharia law across the Nation. All Indian Muslim Personal Board has been stated it officially that they don’t believe in the Indian Penal code and want to set up Sharia courts in every city of India. Seems Telangana Government is pushing this agenda ahead for the sake of power, but we would like to give them advice, that such a dangerous game will only burn their hands.
