Rajagopal, a farmer from Tamil Nadu, wanted to sell his farmland to repay a loan. He could not, because the Waqf Board claimed his entire village, Tiruchendurai, including the Manendiyavalli Sametha Chandrasekhara Swamy temple, which is over 1,000 years old. It led to political and communal tensions.

About 2,500 kilometres away, the Waqf Board staked claim on two islands in Bet Dwarka in Shri Krishna’s Devbhoomi Dwarka.

From Bengaluru’s Eidgah ground, even though there was no title transfer to any Muslim organisation as per the government, Waqf’s claims that it was a Waqf property from the 1850s means that it is now forever a Waqf property.

From the Waqf Board claiming 400 acres of land at Munambam near Kochi, where 600 families, mostly Christian, live, to a plot owner in Shiv Shakti society, Surat, registering his plot with the Gujarat Waqf Board, and people starting to offer namaz there overnight, land grab in the name of religion has assumed grotesque proportions. Recently, some even claimed Kumbh to be on waqf land.

The Islamic claim of “once a waqf, always a waqf" has led to disputes and even riots. The Waqf Act, 1995, and its 2013 amendment have led to wanton encroachment, mismanagement, ownership disputes, delays in registration and surveys, and large-scale litigations. There are........

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