'State won't remove temples built on Waqf land': Siddaramaiah tells Karnataka Assembly, BJP stages walkout

Belagavi: A puny 0.006 per cent of agricultural lands are under dispute involving Waqf, the Congress government told the Assembly in a data-driven defence to discredit the shrill campaign run by the BJP, which walked out in protest Wednesday.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah offered to constitute a committee headed by a retired High Court judge to resolve disputes between Waqf and schools, temples and other non-Muslim institutions.

“If there are temple properties that are Waqf, we won't touch them and withdraw any notice issued. If farmers are being inconvenienced, we won't evict any of them,” Siddaramaiah said.

Much of the government's defence was helmed by Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, handpicked by Siddaramaiah to bust myths in the Waqf controversy.

“Karnataka has three crore acres of agricultural lands. Out of this, there’s a dispute involving 20,000 acres. That’s 0.006%. This doesn’t concern even one in a lakh farmers. But such panic spread that all farmers would go up in arms,” Gowda said.

“They (BJP) went to the extent of saying Muslims are out to snatch properties belonging to Hindus. Since 2004, a total of 9,800 properties were marked as Waqf in land records. This involved 11,204 farmers. Of them, 9,124 are Muslims and only 2,080 are Hindus,” Gowda said.

Gowda explained that the first set of rules for Waqf assets were framed by the British Raj in 1913. “Initially, Muzrai and Waqf came under one department before they were separated,” he said.

Karnataka has 1.12 lakh acres of notified Waqf property. “Of this, they still don’t have 92,000 acres. That’s because land records were unchanged, which led to problems,” Gowda said.

It was when the BJP was in power that 4,500 properties were given to Waqf, Gowda said. “Under Congress, only 600 properties went to Waqf,” he said. “But today, they’ve misled people that it was Congress that did everything. BJP has mastered the art of making people believe lies.”

Gowda went on to fact-check several claims made by the BJP. "It was said that the Kuruba deity shrine Beeradevara Gudi in Aland had become Waqf. That's true, but it happened in 2020 when BJP was in power. Our government, in September, took back the temple," he said.

The BJP had claimed that the school where Sir M Visvesvaraya studied became Waqf. "This, too, happened in 2019 under the BJP. It was Congress, in November, that restored the school's name in land records," Gowda said.

Gowda flashed a copy of the model Waqf rules prepared by the Modi administration in 2016. "It is the union government that has issued directives on recovery of properties transferred in contravention of Waqf rules," he said.

The Congress government, Gowda said, has done "ten times more" to protect Hindu temples. "While only 600 properties have been given to Waqf, we have made khatas in favour of Hindu temples totalling to 10,702 acres," he said. "But nobody speaks about this truth."