According to CNN-News18, the Narendra Modi-led Central government is cementing its foot on a new move that intends to bring changes to the act regarding the Waqf Board’s powers. On Friday, the Union Cabinet cleared about 40 changes to the Waqf law, whose objective is to streamline the management of Shia Islamic religious properties and its endowments across the country.
“According to the changes listed, the claims regarding the properties belonging to the Waqf Boards will have to be authenticated. Accordingly, the contested properties of the Waqf Boards will also have to be authenticated,” the sources said.
They have also stated that a new bill concerning the amendments to the Waqf Act will be presented in Parliament next week.
Waqf boards have about over 8 lac of acre of land. The micro-plans included 7 lakh properties with an average floor area of around 9.4 lakh acres. The UPA government in the year 2013 had expanded more powers of the Waqf Boards through the amendments in the original Act.
The Waqf Act, 1995, individually pertains to regulation of ‘auqaf,’ which can be understood as assets given and notified as waqf by the ‘wakif’—the legal holder who designates a property for any purpose recognized under Muslim law as pious, religious, or charitable.
The changes to the bill sought are to extend the representation of feminine gender in the Central Waqf Council and state boards.
The said amendments will be of great significance, especially after the series of elections in the states of Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand, as sources revealed.
The government had earlier pointed out that the state Waqf boards enjoyed very wide powers to take an acquisition of any property, and every survey of such properties was on the cards in most of the states.
Moreover, it is said that the government had planned to engage district magistrates so as to protect the misuse of the assets of the Waqf property.
