Bhopal, India – In January this yr in Ujjain, a metropolis within the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, authorities bulldozed almost 250 properties, together with houses, outlets and a century-old mosque, to clear a sprawling 2.1 hectares (5.27 acres) of land.
The land belonged to the Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board. Derived from Arabic, “waqf” refers to moveable or immoveable properties – mosques, faculties, graveyards, orphanages, hospitals and even vacant plots – donated by Muslims for non secular or charitable functions to God, thereby making such property transfers irrevocable and prohibiting sale and different makes use of.
However the Ujjain waqf land was cleared for a so-called Mahakal Hall, a $1bn authorities venture surrounding the town’s well-known Mahakaleshwar Temple.
India, residence to greater than 200 million Muslims, has the most important variety of waqf property on this planet – greater than 872,000 properties, spanning almost 405,000 hectares (1 million acres), with an estimated worth of about $14.22bn. They’re managed by waqf boards in each state and federally-run territory.
Collectively, waqf boards are the nation’s largest city landowners and the third-largest total, after the military and the railways respectively.
The Indian parliament is anticipated to debate – presumably this week – amendments to the decades-old Waqf Act that has ruled these waqf boards, and which has, over time, entrenched an increasing number of energy of their arms. The modification invoice, proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), may give the federal government unprecedented management over what occurs with waqf properties.
Muslim teams allege that the Modi administration is utilizing its parliamentary power to additional marginalise the minority group.
However at the same time as the talk dominates tv studio conversations, some activists and legal professionals cite the Ujjain case for instance of a deeper set of issues which have lengthy plagued waqf properties: years of mismanagement resulting in encroachments, which the amended legislation would possibly make worse.
‘A direct violation’
Madhya Pradesh, India’s second-largest state by measurement, has been ruled by the BJP for many of the previous 22 years, aside from a short interval from December 2018 to March 2020 when the centrist Congress occasion was in energy earlier than it misplaced a majority within the state meeting.
Since being appointed the state’s chief minister in December 2023, Mohan Yadav, a BJP politician from Ujjain, has been getting ready for Kumbh 2028, a Hindu pilgrimage held each 12 years on the banks of the town’s Shipra River. The demolition of waqf properties across the Mahakaleshwar Temple is broadly seen as a part of the federal government’s acquisition of lands for the Kumbh pilgrimage, anticipated to attract tens of millions of devotees.
Critics allege that state officers ignored a 1985 authorities doc that established that the Ujjain web site was a Muslim graveyard the place a historic mosque – massive sufficient to accommodate 2,000 devotees – additionally stood. Through the years, influential builders with political connections illegally offered plots for a residential colony there, leading to greater than 250 everlasting buildings that have been razed in January.
The federal government’s acquisition doc, obtained by Al Jazeera, reveals that in June 2023, a income division officer in Ujjain objected to the state administration’s plan to take over the waqf land. In his be aware, the officer wrote that residents had proven him a 1985 gazette notification, proving that it was a waqf land.
The officer urged {that a} “No Objection Certificates” needs to be obtained from the state waqf board to amass the land. A month later, nevertheless, the Ujjain district administration issued an order, saying there was “no permission required when [land is] acquired for social trigger”.
“The acquisition is a direct violation of the Waqf Act,” mentioned lawyer Sohail Khan, who has challenged the Ujjain takeover in court docket.
Although the federal government paid 330 million rupees ($3.8m) as compensation to individuals whose homes or outlets have been demolished in January, many within the metropolis requested why the Waqf Board had not claimed that quantity – versus individuals who had purportedly occupied the plot illegally to arrange houses and outlets there.
When Al Jazeera requested Sanawar Patel, chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board and a BJP chief in Ujjain, why he didn’t oppose the acquisition or declare compensation, he mentioned: “I’d do what the occasion orders as a result of I’m right here due to the occasion.”
He mentioned that the Waqf Board wrote a letter to the Ujjain district administration asking it to not disburse the compensation to the residents of unlawful houses on the land, however didn’t clarify why he didn’t problem the administration in court docket. Patel additionally conceded that greater than 90 % of waqf properties within the state have both been encroached upon or are beneath litigation in courts.
Ashish Agarwal, a BJP spokesman in Madhya Pradesh, in the meantime, claimed that the state authorities acquired the Ujjain land “primarily based on its requirement and following the laid down legal guidelines”. He refused to talk additional.
‘Historical past won’t forgive us’
India’s waqf boards are arrange beneath the 1954 Waqf Act, and since then, Muslims have been working the our bodies with the assistance of the federal government. Extra legal guidelines handed in subsequent years – 1995 and 2013 – gave extra powers to the waqf boards and even arrange waqf tribunals, that are alternate courts meant to settle disputes associated to waqf properties.
However late final month, Modi’s cupboard cleared the draft Waqf (Modification) Invoice, 2024, which proposes 14 amendments to the previous legislation.
Among the controversial proposed amendments embrace the appointment of non-Muslims as waqf board members and necessary registration of properties deemed to be “waqf” with the district administration.
“That is the start of capturing land of mosques and dargahs [shrines]. Historical past won’t forgive us,” mentioned Sanjay Singh, a parliamentarian from the opposition Aam Aadmi Social gathering (AAP), who is among the 31 members of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) shaped to debate opposition objections to the proposed amendments earlier than the complete parliament debates the adjustments this week.
Supreme Courtroom lawyer Anas Tanwir advised Al Jazeera that the Ujjain case “displays a broader nationwide concern of political interference and degradation of waqf lands”.
“The administration of waqf properties in India has lengthy been affected by mismanagement and encroachment,” he mentioned. “The proposed Waqf (Modification) Invoice, 2024 doubtlessly exacerbates the issues.”
However Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board Chairman Patel claimed the amendments have been introduced by the federal government “to root out the prevailing issues and repair the anomalies”.
Deliberate dispossession
Whereas the deliberate amendments have sparked considerations about how they could give the federal government larger management over waqf properties, many Muslim group leaders and legal professionals say these lands have been broadly encroached upon even beneath the present legislation.
Specialists cite a decades-old sample of deliberate dispossession, mismanagement and corruption within the authorities’s dealing with of waqf properties. They complain of a scientific diversion of waqf properties by district income officers and different authorities, and the widespread unlawful occupation and conversion of waqf land to non-public possession.
Most waqf lands or properties, they are saying, have been declared non-waqf by the federal government’s income division, the state physique that maintains land information and collects taxes on them.
The Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board has carried out two surveys of its properties to this point, within the late Sixties and the Nineteen Eighties, and located that it had management over greater than 23,000 properties. In subsequent years, it digitised its information and geotagged them for higher identification.
Specialists, nevertheless, additionally allege that the federal government’s income division has outdated land information, typically primarily based on pre-independence surveys. Regardless of the 1954 Waqf Act making it necessary for the division to make related adjustments in its land information primarily based on the waqf board surveys, income information weren’t up to date. For instance, Ujjain had 1,014 waqf properties as per the 1985 gazette, however none of them are listed as waqf property in income information.
“Out of these 1,014 property, 368 are listed as government-owned, 454 as personal, and information for 192 properties are both incomplete or lacking fully,” says a public curiosity litigation filed in December by Ujjain-based lawyer Aashar Warsi within the Madhya Pradesh excessive court docket.
Digitisation of land information, which began within the late 2000s, compounded the issue. Because the software program solely had two columns – authorities and personal – lands talked about as waqf-owned in income information have been typically moved to the federal government column.
“Due to this, Bhopal’s historic Moti Mosque that was inbuilt 1857, is registered as a authorities property, which is absurd,” says Masood Khan, a member of a group group campaigning for the restoration of waqf lands. Khan has filed a grievance with the waqf tribunal, requesting it to direct the income division to make corrections relating to the mosque in its information.
Al Jazeera requested Madhya Pradesh’s Income Minister Karan Singh Verma why income information weren’t up to date in authorities information. “Because it’s a chronic difficulty, the minister doesn’t know a lot about it. We’ll look into the matter,” his workplace replied.
![Ujjain's Nizamuddin Colony, built on waqf land, partially demolished during a government drive in January [Kashif Kakvi/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/5.-Ujjains-Nizamuddin-Colony-which-was-cleared-by-the-Govt-in-January-2025.-Over-250-structures-including-homes-shops-mosque-were-razed-to-built-a-parking-of-the-Mahakal-Lok-Corridor-Temple.-1-1742822993.jpg?resize=770%2C348)
Mismanagement and corruption
Muslims say the Ujjain takeover will not be an remoted incident, however a part of a sample seen throughout Madhya Pradesh and different components of India.
Warsi’s petition says there’s a “systematic and deliberate loot of waqf properties beneath the watchful eyes of the governments and its officers”. It provides that regardless of a number of letters from the Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board and the federal Ministry of Minority Welfare between 2001 to 2023, advising the Madhya Pradesh authorities to make corrections in its income information, it “turned a deaf ear” to the difficulty, permitting the “plundering of waqf properties to proceed unabated”.
“The mismatch of waqf land information with income information is a typical phenomenon throughout the nation that’s feeding the encroachers,” Supreme Courtroom lawyer and waqf legislation professional Mehmood Pracha advised Al Jazeera.
In January 2021, the Madhya Pradesh authorities authorised an NGO that had BJP leaders as its trustees to amass 1.2 hectares (2.88 acres) of waqf land in Bhopal. The location in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood was designated as a graveyard in state information and had half a dozen graves on it.
Earlier than the waqf board’s tribunal or a court docket may order a keep on the acquisition, the NGO constructed a wall round it in 2021, after which introduced plans to assemble a group corridor there. Authorities imposed a curfew within the space and deployed a big contingent of policemen to preempt any protest.
“The Waqf Act obligates the district administration or the federal government to take away unauthorised constructions, however when the federal government itself indulges in encroachment, who’s going to uphold the legislation?” requested activist Khan.
Waqf Board members say a whole bunch of waqf properties in Bhopal, Indore and different cities of Madhya Pradesh have both been encroached upon by the state authorities or are held by influential personal people.
“The Madhya Pradesh Police headquarters, Bhopal Police management room, visitors police station and plenty of different authorities places of work are constructed on prime land owned by waqf,” a Waqf Board member, talking on situation of anonymity, advised Al Jazeera, including that greater than 100 graveyards have disappeared from the state capital, which as soon as had almost 140.
Typically, the “mutawallis”, caretakers of a property appointed by the waqf board, have been discovered to be concerned within the fraudulent sale of waqf land or unauthorised building at a waqf property.
In December 2024, Madhya Pradesh Police arrested a person referred to as Nasir Khan, a former caretaker of a waqf property in Indore, for allegedly forging waqf paperwork for private achieve and promoting a multimillion waqf property within the metropolis. Police discovered pretend letterheads and official waqf board stamps in his home.
Specialists say years of presidency and personal encroachment, corruption and mismanagement have made waqf properties susceptible. With the brand new amendments, they are saying, the federal government needs to legally take them over.
“With rising inhabitants, the values of lands are skyrocketing. Since waqf boards personal large properties on prime locations throughout India, the federal government, by utilizing the newest modification, needs to get management over these lands in a single go,” lawyer Pracha advised Al Jazeera.
