The long-delayed project to geotag all Waqf properties across the country that began in 2017 under the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs’ “Quami Waqf Boards Taraqqiati Scheme” has yet again revised its deadline from March 2022 to November 2023.
The scheme was envisaged on the basis of recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee in the past. The government wanted to map the immovable assets under the Waqf boards, to ensure its proper utilisation and monetisation. The exercise is also aimed at ensuring that these properties are not lost to encroachments and other counter ownership claims.
According to estimates, there are over six lakh Waqf properties, out of which, in the last five years, 2 lakh properties have been geotagged. To speed up the process, the Central Waqf Council, an autonomous body under the Minority Affairs Ministry, has called for bids by March 21 to empanel more agencies to carry out the GIS/GPS survey. A pre-bid meeting has been called for on Wednesday.
Sources said the council aimed to hire 20 agencies to speed up the work. In December, it hired nine more agencies that included IITs in Hyderabad, Jodhpur, and Kanpur as also the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi.
The delay, according to the sources, was primarily because “realistic targets” based on actual experiences was not set. It was earlier estimated that by March 2020, at least 50 percent of the properties will be geotagged. But by February 2021, the exercise had been undertaken only for 96,000 properties, as per the standing committee report.
Pandemic problem
The Ministry cited the pandemic as the prime reason for the tardy progress. However, as officials pointed out, in the last five years since the work on the project started, only three agencies were working on it, with often no ground presence of the areas they are surveying, which brought in multifarious issues.
“We just could not foresee the challenges involved in this project,” a senior Ministry official said. The State governments and often the Mutawalli (the property management) have not been cooperative. At several places, the survey teams had to even face hostilities. The documentation of these properties had also been messy. There have been instances that they may have been rented out and then sublet by the tenants over extended periods.
The geosurveys have also thrown up some interesting findings. “The registered Waqf properties are little over six lakh, but in last five years, the surveys have shown more properties, and the number today stands at eight lakh, subject to verification. Chhattisgarh alone has reported 36,000 new properties, which needs to be cross verified,” the official added.
