Telangana High Court on Tuesday closed two Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petitions pertaining to encroachment of Waqf Board lands, after perusing the status report filed by the State government assuring protection of all such lands.
A bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N.V. Shravan Kumar passed the order after Special Government Pleader Harender Pershad presented the report before the bench. The SGP told the court that different pieces of lands scattered across the State, total admeasuring 84 acres and 30 guntas were under the clutches of land grabbers.
All these lands had been recovered from the land sharks by the Waqf Board by initiating legal processes against them. Another piece of land of one acre and 32 guntas was also retrieved from the illegal occupation of land grabbers under survey no. 415 of Hasanparthy in Warangal district, the SGP informed the bench.
Waqf Board Chief Executive Officer Shahnawaz Qasim had constituted a Special Task Force to keep a tab on the lands located in different parts of the State. Continuous monitoring of the lands vulnerable for illegal occupation was on by the STF teams, he said.
The status report by Mr. Qasim mentioned that in 23 cases there were stay orders from different courts. Vacate petitions were filed in these cases involving 1,287 acres of land. Orders were awaited in those cases.
One PIL plea was filed by Mohammed Ilyas seeking a direction to the government to frame rules for protection of Muslim graveyard lands. Another was filed seeking implementation of the Complete House Committee report of 1997 for taking measures to protect Waqf lands. After examining the status report, the bench decided to close the two petitions.
