In mid-November, the High Court of Telangana rapped the Waqf board for its inaction against the encroachment of graveyards.

Syed Khaled Shahbaaz

IN Telangana, the living are encroaching the land of the dead, embezzling lands meant for burial of the departed Muslims, leaving behind a mysterious connotation whether any intervention can actually assuage the public concerns for the silently disappearing Waqf properties in the state, including Muslim graveyards.

According to a report submitted by the Telangana State Waqf Board, there are 723 graveyards of which 86 have been encroached. In mid-November, the High Court of Telangana, in a bench comprising Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice VinaySen Reddy, rapped the Waqf board for its inaction against the encroachment of graveyards.

Following the orders of the High Court, the government on Monday appointed Shahnawaz Qasim IPS as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Waqf Board. (He was not available for comments over the phone and a text communication didn’t yield response as of this writing). The DIG-rank officer’s announcement as the new CEO comes after the court berated Mohammed Khasim for his inaction in protecting the Waqf land from encroachers.

But it is not just Khasim who seems to be at fault. A quick analysis at the Waqf data in Telangana reveals that the state had 1785.17 acres of Waqf land, of which 11469.28 acres amounting to 82.3% of the total Waqf land in the state has been encroached. And these include lands endowed for graveyards, mosques, chillas, takias and other institutions. Land encroachers have crawled upon these properties like slow poison, discreetly and painfully, over time. While it is a matter of grave concern, such huge amounts of land haven’t been lost overnight.

When it comes to graveyards, many of them located in densely- populated areas of Hyderabad are laced with a boundary wall marking its perimeter, but those that have remained unmarked long since have been occupied. Data from the Waqf board web portal of the state reveals there are 8,521 graveyards in Telangana with Medak having the highest number of graveyards at 1,431 followed by Warangal (1,325), Rangareddy (1,120), Nalgonda (1,070), Mahboobnagar (766), Karimnagar (760), Nizamabad (704), Hyderabad (513), Adilabad (439) and Khammam (393). A Waqf board official contacted by this journalist admitted that the statistics on the website are outdated.

“The data is from the first survey that was reportedly conducted in the 1960s, with Gazettes documenting the facts of the survey printed in the 1980s”, says Waqf activist and journalist Ather Moin. Most of the city’s graveyards are more than 200 to 300 years old, and only a few new ones have been identified.

Encroachments

Waqf, in Islam, is an endowment for the cause of charity, education and empowerment of the community. In such an essence, the endowment becomes consecrated, and protecting it from illegal encroachments even more important. Graveyards, hence, are consecrated places where funeral rites are performed, and they must be treated as such. In a stark contrast, most graveyards in Hyderabad, and surrounding areas scream for attention.

Many graveyards with a few exceptions have weeds and irregular growth of thorny plants up to 6 feet high. It may not be uncommon for one to find tarot cards or stumble over jingling bottles of wine left over by drunkards here and there. In such cases, apparently negligence has played a major role in turning graveyards into eye candy for the prying eyes of the real estate mafia.

“In several areas in Hyderabad, large chunks of land, particularly along the perimeter of the graveyard, are disappearing”, he says. But it’s not vanishing in thin air. This land is being crawled upon by the impoverished from the nearby slums, or in many cases, by real estate developers who audaciously slice out territories from these areas, plot them and sell them after developing an apartment or a building.

In the making of a metropolis, several necropolises have disappeared. Blame the rapid urbanisation of Hyderabad and, as many social activists put it, on “the ineptitude of the state Waqf board”; all this has paved the way for land sharks feeding on the affluence of oft-neglected land banks in the state. For instance, a shopping mall at Kachiguda has its foundations on what once used to be a Muslim graveyard. There is no dearth of such instances.

“Among many pointers, one prominent reason for the state Waqf Board’s failure in protecting these lands is the lack of executive power with the board,” says Moin. “And that’s not the only excuse. The Waqf Act also needs to be fortified”, he says.

Lackadaisical or Lacking Strength?

Making matters worse is the fact that the Waqf board has a severe paucity of staff and there is no defined cadre strength. “A waqf inspector is assigned as many as six zones to inspect, while inspecting properties in even one zone would be too difficult for an individual”, Moin adds. The laxity in concluding land surveys is also to blame. “Every 10 years there must be a survey of waqf properties. The second survey is still pending completion for almost 20 years now”, he says.

“When no procedural surveys are conducted periodically, how can the status of encroachments be assessed. How can you stop losing properties when there is no proper assessment or measures in place to prevent their exploitation?” he questions. Such matters only come to light when it is already too late. Explaining further, Moin adds, “the first survey of Waqf properties in the state was conducted in the 1960s. It lasted till 1978 and its Gazettes were published in the 1980s.”

But it’s not just the land that is shrinking. The hearts and the humanity factor in the people are shrinking, too. In May 2020, a Muslim man who died during the pandemic was denied burial space reportedly by caretakers of six graveyards and had to be ultimately laid to rest in a Hindu cemetery.

In November 2020, Waqf Board Chairman Mohammed Saleem during an inspection of Waqf properties at Jalpally and Pahadishareef warned the locals to be wary before buying the land saying attempts were being made to encroach Waqf lands and sell them. He also said the board was fighting encroachments and will be dealing with encroachers strictly by demolishing illegal properties and razing any unauthorized establishments. The Waqf Board Chairman was mum on graveyard statistics when contacted by Clarion.

Around the same time, to address the gap in demand and availability of burial space, 10 acres of land was allotted at Pahadishareef and five acres at Serilingampally for Muslim graveyards.

The Legal Course

In the event of an encroachment, the Waqf board has the right to notify the encroacher under Section 51 (Section 51 in The Waqf Act, 1995. Alienation of Waqf property without sanction of Board to be void), following which the case is taken to the Waqf Tribunal.  If the tribunal rules in favor of the Waqf board, the board can take the legal course to evict the encroacher. But a legal recourse is usually procrastinated in such cases due to several variables, including counter-filing, the party approaching the higher courts, etc.

Community Assets?

According to Osman Al Hajiri, who heads the Deccan Waqf Protection Committee, “even where the courts have ruled in favour of the Waqf board, the Board has not claimed back the properties from encroachers. This leaves one to wonder if there is a nexus between the board and the encroaching parties, or is it sheer negligence?”

“With more and more land being embezzled by encroachers, the state may experience paucity of land for burial purposes in the future. Since most graveyards in the city are very old, they are occupied to their optimum capacity. Today, we are neglecting this, tomorrow our generations will curse us for destroying the assets of the community by neglecting it or keeping mum.”

Exorbitant Demands

“As the space for burial within the city limits is decreasing, the caretakers are demanding more and more money. In some cases, they are charging exorbitant amounts, and that’s a problem that does not appear like a problem immediately as the grieving family ultimately pays whatever is demanded for the last resting place of their loved ones”, says Abdul Rasheed who lost three members of his family around June this year. In some graveyards that are adjacent to Durgahs, a slot under the surface can cost up to one lakh rupees owing to the increased number of visitors and the proximity to the shrine in the graveyard.

Repurposing Properties

According to veteran journalist Syed Fazil Hussain Parvez, “If the Waqf land would have been orderly repurposed, it could have ameliorated the financial and social status of the community. “These lands and properties could have been used to set up small scale industries, production factories, warehouses, educational institutions with the intent of providing employment, a means of education or using the financial returns for the development of the community. Initiatives as such could pull the community from the abyss of backwardness”, he says, referring to the Sachar Committee report. Sadly, such initiatives haven’t found a die cast yet, he comments.

Do the circumstances merit a periodic inspection by a field officer to check encroachments? Can the Waqf Board use modern technical means, perhaps aerial drones fitted with land survey and monitoring apparatus to periodically keep a tab on illegal encroachments? Can the frequency of land surveys be increased using such means to check for unauthorized constructions? These are questions that merit a thought in the era where technology is an enabler of everything the mind can conceive.

If encroachments continue, the purpose with which the land is donated or endowed is defeated. It leaves one to wonder whether any more land should be donated to the Waqf or not. Whether the state Waqf Board tightens the noose around encroachers, or will it have to undergo a complete overhaul to warrant such changes, only time will tell. Meanwhile, it will not be unforeseen if the future generations find the continuingly withering burial space in the state and the fast-shrinking canvas of Waqf properties an incorrigible fault of administrative, intellectual and political megaminds of the time.