The state government will not touch temples or other religious structures on Waqf land or evict farmers from such land but will take strict action against encroachers, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said in the Assembly on Wednesday, December 18, during the ongoing winter session in Belagavi. Even if notices had been served to temples built on Waqf properties, they would be withdrawn, he said.
The Waqf issue has cropped up multiple times during the Assembly session, and Siddaramaiah, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, and Waqf Minister BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan took the opposition to task for spreading misinformation and creating panic among farmers.
The Waqf issue blew up overnight in October when Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya claimed that the Waqf Board was claiming ownership of farmers’ land. These claims caused panic among farmers who rushed to check their Record of Rights, Tenancy, and Crops (RTC), which is an ownership document. Many farmers found that column 11, which is meant for rights and liabilities such as loans and stay orders, mentioned the Waqf Board. Column 9 lists the name of the absolute owner.
Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda told the Assembly that land measuring 47,263 acres and 23,620 acres granted to farmers under the Inams Abolition Act and the Land Reforms Act, respectively, would not be touched.
“The government has decided not to interfere with this land. The government is committed to protecting the interests of farmers who have been granted land under the Inams Abolition Act and Land Reforms Act,” he said.
TNM had reported that the situation had risen in the wake of developments that date back to a 1998 Supreme Court order, which held that land or any property that was declared Waqf would always remain Waqf. The Minority Welfare Department in 2017 had sought an opinion from the Law Department on whether this ruling applied to Waqf properties granted under the Inam Abolition Acts of 1954 and 1977 and the Land Reforms Act of 1961. In response, the Law Department cited the 1998 SC ruling and said that the Waqf land would remain Waqf. Based on this ruling, the state government had initiated the process of issuing notices to such farmers.
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Krishna Byre Gowda said that apart from over 70,000 acres granted under the Inam abolition and land reform laws, private parties had encroached on around 19,969 acres of Waqf land. “Shouldn’t the government take back the land that private people are enjoying with no claims over it? Waqf land is community land. The department has asked that these encroachments be cleared. Is that wrong?” he said.
He told the Assembly that the state had 3 crore acres of agricultural land, of which only about 20,000 acres were under dispute, which was 0.006%. “This does not concern even one in a lakh farmers. But such panic was created in such a systematic manner that all farmers have gone up in arms. This is not an issue that anybody needs to panic about. They went to the extent of saying Muslims are out to snatch properties belonging to Hindus,” he said.
The Minister said that 9,800 properties belonging to 11,204 farmers had been marked as Waqf in land records since 2004. Of these, 9,124 farmers are Muslims, while 2,080 are Hindus.
He also said that the Waqf Board had 1.12 lakh acres of notified property, of which 92,000 acres were still not in possession of the Board because the land records had not been changed.
During the BJP’s tenure, 4,500 properties had been given to the Board, while under the Congress it was 600. But throughout, the BJP had “misled the people” and blamed the Congress. “BJP has mastered the art of making people believe lies,” he said.
It was the Congress government that had put in “10 times more” effort to protect Hindu temples, Byre Gowda said, adding that the Congress government had made khatas in the name of Hindu temples totalling about 10,702 acres.
Gowda also said that Waqf adalats were held to recover 17,000 acres of properties that had been encroached and that 85% of the encroachers were Muslims. He also said that 5,667 notices were issued to farmers during the BJP’s tenure between 2008-13 and 2019-23, while the Congress government had issued 3,286 notices during its previous tenure between 2013 and 2018.
Dissatisfied with the response, Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka staged a walkout. However, the JD(S) MLAs, who are in alliance with the BJP, continued to remain in the Assembly through the Revenue Minister’s reply. The BJP repeated a demand that it has been making for several weeks that the 1974 gazette notification of Waqf properties be withdrawn. However, Siddaramaiah rejected the demand.