Of the 11,204 Karnataka farmers who have received Waqf Board notices on land encroachment, about 81 per cent are Muslims and only 2,080 farmers belong to the Hindu community, the state government said in the Assembly on Wednesday.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the government will set up a committee headed by a retired High Court judge to assess whether temples and land cultivated by farmers are in waqf property. He said the Waqf Board would not lay claim to any temple or land being cultivated by farmers.
Responding on behalf of the government, Revenue Minister Krishna Bire Gowda said that out of the nearly 30 million acres of agricultural land in the state, out of more than 20,000 acres, only 4,500 acres of waqf land is cultivable. “This is only 0.006 per cent of the total cultivable land,” the minister said, accusing the opposition BJP of spreading rumors that Muslims were encroaching on Hindu lands.
Waqf rule in the country was before independence. A 1974 gazette notification in the state pegged the total waqf land at 1.12 lakh acres. However, after the implementation of the Land Revenue Act and the Abolition of Bounty Act, a large portion was transferred to the farmers, the minister said, so the board currently has only 20,54 acres.
His response came after the BJP walked out, demanding that Housing, Waqf and Minority Affairs Minister Zameer Ahmed Khan answer all the questions raised by the opposition and withdraw the 1974 notification. The Chief Minister rejected the notification saying it was based on the Central Government’s Waqf Act.
BJP MLA Basangowda Patil Yatnal – who had led two BJP campaigns demanding abolition of the Waqf Board – was absent from the House during the minister’s reply. Additionally, some JD(S) MLAs did not walk out with their NDA allies, even though they had supported the BJP in other walkouts during the ongoing winter session. JD(S) legislature party leader Suresh Babu said the MLAs were sitting back to discuss important issues.
Khan said that during its two tenures, 2008-13 and 2019-23, the BJP government had issued 4,667 notices of encroachment of waqf land, while the Congress governments had sent 3,286 notices. The notices are based on various Supreme Court orders pressing for the preservation of waqf properties across the country, he added.
Responding to opposition claims that encroachment notices were issued to temples, the minister said the government would not take action if temples were found to be on waqf land.
Siddaramaiah then interjected that he had directed the temple and the farmers to withdraw any notices given to them. He also pointed to the BJP manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, where the saffron party promised to remove all waqf land encroachments.
There was a heated exchange between the treasury and opposition benches as opposition leader R Ashok and others insisted that either Khan or Siddaramaiah address all the concerns raised by BJP MLAs in the Assembly last week. The ruling party protested saying that Gowda should also reply as the revenue department officials had issued the notice.
Later the demand for withdrawal of the 1974 notification became a bone of contention. When Ashok pressed for its withdrawal, the chief minister asked why the BJP had not done so in its previous two terms.
Siddaramaiah later said that the entire waqf row was politically motivated, adding that the state government had no authority to change the Central Act.
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