Waqf Bill will benefit encroachers, claim community members

Though the state's Muslim leaders insist that the passing of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, would erode their claim over what "rightfully" belongs to the community and encourage encroachments, the Waqf Board Administrator, Zakir Hussain, says sweeping changes are unlikely since GPS mapping had been carried out for all board properties, and no new properties were likely to be added. The government was supervising the working, he said.

The community leaders claimed that the amendments to the Bill were aimed at benefiting encroachers occupying properties for over 12 years, and ensuring that 400 new properties identified in 12 districts of the state did not come under the Waqf Board. “A survey was carried out in half of the districts and 400 more properties belonging to Waqf were identified. If the survey is carried out in the remaining districts as well, we will have at least a thousand new properties. However, these will never come to us because these have been encroached upon for decades. We cannot even carry out measurements, and with one amendment, these properties will go to them,” an Ambala leader said on condition of anonymity.

The leaders in Mewat and Gurugram said the inclusion of non-Muslims in the board reeked of “malicious intentions”, adding that the temples, too, in that case should have non-Hindu members. “This will finish community ownership of the properties and lead to increased litigation, besides division of the community into smaller local groups for exercising control,” another community representative said, adding that Haryana had women members in the past, though the BJP was claiming the idea as its own.

Though he does not have many supporters within his own community with regard to the Bill proposals, Zakir Hussain—former MLA and BJP leader—maintained that the functioning of the board was “largely in consonance with” the proposals of the Bill. He said property identification had been carried out with the approval of the state revenue authority.

“There is a lot of transparency in the working of the board and the Divisional Commissioner is already involved in the identification of Waqf properties. We don’t have the kind of disputes that exist in other states. We have regular audits, GPS mapping of 99 per cent properties has been carried out, and the government has been monitoring the goings-on. Our monthly income, varying between Rs 2 crore and Rs 2.5 crore, is spent on the payment of salaries and carrying out development works,” he stated.

However, Congress MLA Aftab Ahmed disputed the claim, alleging that the government wanted to take over all Waqf properties by diluting the safeguards for the minority community in the Act.

“This is completely unconstitutional and the governments wants to control the Waqf properties,” he said.

In Haryana, the board has 12,336 units spread over 20,000 acres, including burial grounds, mosques and agricultural land across the state. There are 24,000 tenants, though only 50 per cent of them are paying rent to the board and most of them are defaulters. There are 1,071 cases in various courts, including 479 cases of property dispute with the Waqf Tribunal. As many as 929 properties across 1,297 acres are under encroachment, it is reported.