Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while speaking during the debate on the Waqf Amendment Bill in Lok Sabha Wednesday, presented an extensive list of properties that he claimed were given to the Waqf Board. The list comprised land owned by temples, other religious groups, the government, and various entities.
Showing this list Shah emphasized that it only reinforces the government’s point of view that the Waqf Board has illegally occupied major lands and properties. Terming it as a ruse for land grabbing, he established his point that “you cannot donate something what is not yours, you donate things which is yours”.
In the examples that he provided on alleged land grabbing Shah stated that the Karnataka High Court had to intervene to prevent the Waqf from taking over 602 sq km of land.
Watch Amit Shah’s address in Lok Sabha here:
वक्फ एक अरबी शब्द है. इसका इतिहास कई हदीसों से जुड़ा है. आज जिस अर्थ में वक्फ शब्द का प्रयोग किया जाता है, वह है ‘अल्लाह के नाम पर, पवित्र और धार्मिक उद्देश्य के लिए संपत्ति का दान’. अभी इसका अर्थ है, charitable endowment, जो दूसरे खलीफा श्री उमर के समय से चला आ रहा है: @amitshah pic.twitter.com/qPL0vOKMII
— SansadTV (@sansad_tv) April 2, 2025
“वक्फ में न मुतल्लवी गैर-इस्लामिक होगा, न वाकिफ. कोई गैर-मुस्लिम सदस्य रखने का प्रावधान न किया है, न हम करना चाहते हैं…1995 तक तो न वक्फ काउंसिल था ना वक्फ बोर्ड. वक्फ धार्मिक कार्य नहीं करता. दान में मिली संपत्ति का प्रबंधन देखना वक्फ की जिम्मेदारी है.”
गृह मंत्री @AmitShah pic.twitter.com/42U0nUZucM
— SansadTV (@sansad_tv) April 2, 2025
“मैं सदन के माध्यम से देश भर के मुसलमान भाइयों-बहनों को कहना चाहता हूं, कि आपके वक्फ में एक भी नॉन-मुस्लिम नहीं आएगा.
वक्फ बोर्ड और वक्फ परिषद का काम क्या है?… वक्फ की संपत्तियां बेच खाने वालों को पकड़ कर इसके बाहर निकालना.”#LokSabha में गृह मंत्री @AmitShah pic.twitter.com/incLQc6BS6
— SansadTV (@sansad_tv) April 2, 2025
He further mentioned that properties in Delhi’s Lutyen’s zone were handed over to the Waqf, and said they began acquiring government land. In Tamil Nadu, a 400-year-old temple property was designated as Waqf land.
Additionally, land meant for a five-star establishment was leased to the Waqf for ₹12,000 per month. Several properties belonging to different religious groups, including Chandra Shekhar Azad Park in Prayagraj, were also declared as Waqf property, he added.
ALSO READ: Congress’s ‘4 Ds’ attack on Centre over tabling of Waqf Amendment Bill
While speaking on the newly tabled Bill, Shah termed it as something that is “instrumental in stopping land grab as well as to bring transparency”. He also said for ASI property, tribal land, private property and for Waqf, one can only donate private, personal property and not the land belonging to a community (village).
Shah also attacked the opposition in his speech, saying that the previous UPA government allegedly changed the Waqf rules days before the 2014 general election. According to Shah, this was done in an attempt to push appeasement politics where they (the Congress-led government) wiped out the provision to take land-grabbing complaints to the courts.
The Home Minister said that they have consulted with a huge number of people before bringing these amendments to the table. “We got over 1 crore suggestions from people…Our principle is clear, we won’t bring any law for vote bank, it’s for justice,” he said. The Bill, he claimed, has even got the support of Christians from Kerala.
Before Amit Shah, Union Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju spoke of a case that was a pending since the 1970s, which involvew several properties in Delhi, including the old Parliament building, that the Delhi Waqf Board had claimed.
According to him, the UPA government allegedly de-notified 123 of these properties and gave them to the Waqf Board, all while this case was still in court. He also added that if the government had not introduced this Bill, then even the new Parliament building would have have been named as a Waqf property.
