Activists warn against Wakf land allotment

Pahadi Sharif: Amid reports of a delegation of the Fruit Market Wholesale Commission Agents calling on State Wakf Board chairman and urging him to allot 16 acres of costly Wakf land at Pahadi Sharif in Jalpally municipality, for a fruit market, rights activists have warned against renting out land in violation of Wakf objectives.

Contending that nothing is wrong in renting Wakf land to increase the board's income, Syed Iftekhar Hussaini, a community activist said, "the transaction should be done in a fair manner upholding the sanctity of the Wakf objectives. The WB should constitute a rental committee, as was done in the past, to ascertain the actual land value of the property and fix rent accordingly. To achieve this a report from the Department of Roads and Buildings (R&B) and the GHMC should be sought to establish revised rates of the land being rented out."

Recalling that a rental committee was formed in 2015-16 by the then special officer Wakf Board Jalaluddin Akbar, to formulate rent, auction of hungies at shrines (dargahs) and other properties, he said, "a similar rental committee should be formed to regularise and fix rents of land identified to set up fruit market at Pahadi Sharif."

Moreover, he said, WB is not entitled to rent out the Wakf land to any association. These sort of agreements should be done through the Department of Agriculture which in turn manned the auctioning of land parcels to fruit agents as per the set procedure. "Any deviation from the set rules will be seen as a violation of Wakf objectives and will be challenged in the court of law," he warned.

Asserted Rashed Khan, a senior Congress leader, "Already the Wakf Board has incurred heavy loss due to such void-ab-initio agreements on throw away rate of rents. No such practice should be allowed to continue that harm the Wakf objectives. The newly constituted Wakf Board should ensure protection of Wakf properties and lands in the State, besides rolling out measures to increase the income of the institution through revision of rents of Wakf assets throughout the State."

"This land was already allotted to individuals for establishing educational institutions; renting it to fruit market is void-ab-initio violation of the Wakf objectives. If the government is serious enough to rehabilitate fruit agents, it should have done so by allotting government land to them instead of rehabilitating them on the Wakf land," he argued.