Ministry of Minority Affairs finalises Wakf Act amendment draft

The Ministry of Minority Affairs has almost finalised a draft Wakf Amendment Act which if enacted would place the state wakf boards under central monitoring, and make encroachment of wakf property a cognisable offence. The move is aimed at checking corruption in the state wakf bodies which have under them properties worth hundreds of crores of rupees and which have by and large failed to benefit the community because of mismanagement. The draft document was now being sent to the Ministry of Law and Justice for legal scrutiny, sources told UNI. Under the amended law, the Central Wakf Council can now keep a watch on the working of state wakf boards and it can send them directives if it finds that they were not working in accordance with the law. There has been enormous resistance from the state boards to any curtailment of their power. But there were equally forceful and repeated demands for regulating their functioning and checking corrupt practices. The proposed amendment also seeks to amend the Act to change the composition of the Central Wakf Council and state Wakf Boards to include experts, professionals and women representatives. Another important amendments which will have a significant effect on the development of wakf properties is that the three-year limit on period for which the properties could be given on lease has been increased to long period. Developers were not coming forward due to the restriction of three-year lease as that was too short a period to yield any results. Though the Act is purported to be introduced in the current session of Parliament, it was unlikely to be tabled as the consultation with the Ministry and later preparation of a Cabinet note will take at least a month, and the current session would end before that. Recently, the Joint Parliamentary Committee blamed the state Governments for neglecting Wakf institutions. ‘Wakf institutions in the country have been victims of apathy and general neglect by the state Governments,’ it said in its report tabled in the last session of Parliament. Deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha K Rahman Khan, who headed the committee, said the report had pointed out several examples of improper functioning of the state Wakf boards like lack of adequate manpower and funds for its functioning, inordinate delay in constitution of Wakf boards in many states, lack of knowledge of wakf properties and indiscriminate encroachment of such properties, with state Wakf board being a silent spectator to it. ‘The report also shows that in many cases, the revenue administrations in the states have showed no interest in entering Wakf revenues in revenue records. Also, no state government has so far completed the survey of the Wakf properties, resulting in their large scale encroachment,’ Mr Rahman said. UNI

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