LAW UNDER CONSIDERATION TO RECOVER WAKF PROPERTIES

The UP government is set to amend the Wakf Act to facilitate recovery of waqf properties that have been sold or encroached over the past eight years. The eight-year period includes five years of the last BSP regime and another three years of the previous SP government when Mulayam Singh was the chief minister. That was the time when “the land mafia were most active and the waqf board chairmen were hand in glove with them’’, according to the Wakf and Minorities Welfare Minister Azam Khan. Azam said the main emphasis of the law would be on restoring waqf properties that had been sold by deleting them from the waqf list. “We had promised this in our manifesto,” he said. “We keep writing letters to DMs and SDMs but we can’t get even a kiosk removed, leave aside permanent structures,’, said Zufar Ahmed Farooqui, Chairman, UP Sunni Central Board of Waqfs at Lucknow. However, the amendments will be effective only after the President’s nod. “For any change in the Central Waqf Act, the assent of the President is a must,” said Additional Advocate General Zafaryab Jilani.