Syed Naseer Hussain is a second-term Rajya Sabha MP of the Congress party from Karnataka. As a member of the JPC (joint parliamentary committee) on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, he has been part of the fractious proceedings on the proposed amendments. In conversation with Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed, he explains his reservations on the Bill and why he remains suspicious of the BJP’s intentions. Excerpts:

Various state waqf boards together control 8.7 lakh properties spanning 9.4 lakh acres across the country. This number is striking and has led to a lot of speculation about how the waqf boards came to own such huge parcels of land.

It is important to clarify that the Central Waqf Council or the state waqf boards do not own even an inch of property. Waqf boards merely oversee auqaf (plural of waqf) donated at some point of time. Large chunks of land were given by royals of all faiths over centuries as ‘inam’ (land grants) to mosques, dargahs, cemeteries, idgahs and other centres of religious activity, and these constitute a sizeable proportion of waqf properties.

The figure of 8.7 lakh properties may seem striking, but if one were to add up the lands owned by and those associated with the religious activities of other communities, the figure will be proportional to their population. For instance, the Hindu religious and charitable endowments boards in just Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka together manage around 11 lakh acres.

There are more than 6.5 lakh villages in the country, and Muslims are present in at least 80–85 per cent of them. Every settlement will have, at the very least, a mosque, a cemetery, an idgah and several dargahs. The idgah itself will be at least an acre.

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One of the stated intentions of the Waqf Bill is to introduce transparency to prevent mismanagement of waqf properties…

The government says it wants greater transparency by digitising information on properties managed by waqf boards, but this........

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