78% of the properties claimed by the UP Waqf Board are Govt owned : UP Govt informs JPC

New Delhi – Uttar Pradesh Government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath informed the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that 78% of the properties claimed by the Waqf Board in the State belong to the Government and Waqf Board has no legal right to them.

78 percent of the properties claimed by Uttar Pradesh Waqf Board belong to the Government. – UP Govt report to the Joint Parliamentary Committee.

These statistics justify why there is a serious demand to dissolve the Waqf Board at the earliest. If not done, the next generation… pic.twitter.com/rd85aYzWkx

— Sanatan Prabhat (@SanatanPrabhat) January 25, 2025

1. Monika Garg, Additional Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh Government’s Minority Welfare Commission told the JPC that the Waqf Board has been claiming rights on 14, 000-hectares of land in the State; however, as per the official records, 11,700 -hectares of land belong to the Government. In the Sachar Committee report, it has been stated that 60 properties claimed by the Waqf Board are owned by the State Government.

2. The UP Government informed the Committee that there are guiding principles and rules for identifying Waqf properties. When the Waqf Board claims the right to any land, that land is checked with the records of 1952 and if it is found to be owned by the Waqf Board, then the Board can request the Government to remove encroachments on such land.

3. It was also informed by the Government that the famous monuments viz. ‘Bada Imambara’, ‘Chhota Imambara’ in Lucknow and ‘Begum ka Maqbara (Tomb of the Queen)’ in Ayodhya are the Government properties, but the Waqf Board has been claiming rights even over such preserved monuments.

4. The Revenue Department of UP informed the JPC that a large part of land registered under class 5 and class 6 by the Waqf Board were registered as Government properties and ‘Gramsabha’ properties.

5. UP Waqf Board has been claiming rights over more than 1,30,000 properties which include even the memorials registered under the Archaeological Survey of India, besides, Balrampur Government Hospital, land belonging to Lucknow Development Authority and many other Government properties. The properties claimed by the Waqf Board as its own were officially allocated by the concerned municipalities to the respective Departments.