Naseer Ahmed, MLC, and Ministers Krishna Byre Gowda and B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan during a meeting in Bengaluru on Thursday.
Credit: Special Arrangement
Bengaluru: The Congress government in Karnataka is likely to decide on uploading details of all unencumbered Waqf properties onto a portal developed by the Centre under the contentious Waqf (Amendment) Act, which was opposed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's administration.
One of the provisions under the Waqf (Amendment) Act was the setting up of a centralised portal for real-time uploading, verification and monitoring of Waqf properties.
In June this year, Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju launched the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development (UMEED) portal.
The Congress government had moved and ensured the passage of a resolution in the Assembly rejecting the Waqf (Amendment) Bill in March this year.
On Thursday, however, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda and Waqf Minister B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan met to discuss uploading property details on UMEED.
"A direction has come from the Union government on making entries of Waqf properties in the centralised portal. This will be examined. We've asked secretaries of both Revenue and Minority Welfare departments to sit and discuss it," Gowda said.
According to sources, Khan approached Gowda seeking a direction to revenue authorities on facilitating the uploading of Waqf property details. "The State government feels that there's no harm in uploading details of legally clear Waqf properties," a source said.
In Islamic law, Waqf refers to properties — movable or immovable —dedicated to religious and charitable purposes.
Karnataka has 48,148 Waqf properties, which include mosques, madrasas, khabrastans, Idgahs, Dargahs, and Ashoorkhanas. There are 4,173 cases of encroachments spanning 2.39 crore sq ft, 12,458 acres, 30,006.15 sq m, 12,119 cents and 10,703 yards. Authorities have removed encroachments in 185 cases, entailing 371 acres, 3.17 lakh sq ft, 312.81 sq m and 17.5 cents.
At one point in time, the Karnataka State Board of Auqaf had 1.28 lakh acres in assets. Only about 36,000 acres are left, Khan told the Legislative Assembly in December 2024. “Originally, there were 1,28,000 acres of Waqf land. Of this, 47,263 acres of land was lost to the Karnataka Inam Abolition Act, 23,620 acres to the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, 3,000 acres were lost due to acquisition for public purposes by the government and 17,969 acres are under private encroachment," Khan said, adding that 95% of usurpers were Muslims themselves.
In the run-up to the Waqf (Amendment) Act, the Opposition BJP took out a shrill campaign against the Congress government after land parcels of some farmers were marked as Waqf.