The government of Uttar Pradesh has informed the Joint Parliamentary Committee that 78% of the land in UP that the state Waqf Board is claiming to own belongs to the government and the Waqf Board has no legal ownership rights on it. The Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill conducted its last meeting of field visits on Tuesday in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow.
The meeting was held under the chairmanship of JPC chief MP Jagdambika Pal. All the stakeholders including members of Shia and Sunni Waqf Boards and the Minority Commission participated in the meeting. According to the media reports, Monika Garg, the Additional Chief Secretary of the Minority Welfare Commission of the UP government, told the JPC that the Waqf Board claims to have 14 thousand hectares of land in the state. But 11.7 thousand hectares of it belong to the government as per official records.
The Sachar Committee report earlier had also said that 60 properties that the Waqf Board is claiming belong to the government. The revenue department informed the JPC that a large portion of the land properties that the Waqf Board is claiming to be its own is registered under class 5 and class 6 in the revenue records. Class 5 and 6 mentions are for government properties and Gram Sabha properties.
According to the media reports, the Waqf Board in UP is claiming the ownership of over 1.3 lakh different properties, these include ASI monuments, Balrampur Government Hospital, LDA lands and many more such areas that belong to the government. Additionally some properties of LDA and Residence Development department that the Waqf Board is claiming as its own were officially allocated to the respective departments from the respective city municipalities.
The UP government informed the JPC that the State has guidelines and rules in place for marking Waqf Properties. When the Waqf Board claims the ownership of a land, the said land’s official records are tallied and ownership details as per 1952 records are matched.
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