By A Mirsab, TwoCircles.net,
Information provided by The Ministry of Minority Affairs in Lok Sabha has revealed that Waqf Board schemes have found no acceleration under the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) lead government and have instead been given the cold shoulder.
On Wednesday, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Minister of State for Minority Affairs replied to a question raised by its own MP from Udaipur (Rajasthan) Arjunlal Meena, stating the implementation of the two plan Schemes namely “Computerisation of records of State Waqf Boards” and “Strengthening of State Waqf Boards” and one non-plan scheme, namely “Development of Urban Waqf Properties” under which funds are provided to Waqf Boards.
The figure provided by the Ministry explains that no fund has been released by the new government ever since its inception for “Computerisation of records of State Waqf Boards” whereas the previous UPA government had at least released Rs 89.7 lakh and Rs 40.09 lakh for 2012-13 and 2013-14 respectively.
Funds released to State Waqf Boards during each of last three years and current year for Strengthening of State Waqf Boards
Although no fund has been allocated for the year 2014-15, the Ministry says the work of computerisation has been outsourced and being implemented through the Central Waqf Council.
As far as second planned scheme “Strengthening of State Waqf Boards “ is concerned, the government has not released any fund for this year. It did, however, released Rs 3.95 crore last year against the UPA government’s allocation of Rs 7 crore in 2014-2015.
The detail of funds released to State Waqf Boards in 2014-15 & 2015-16
The Ministry claims that this scheme was initiated in 2014-2015 but an answer given in Lok Sabha on August 5, 2015 explains that for the same scheme UPA government had allotted Rs 5 Crore and Rs 7 crore in the years 2012-13, 2013-14 respectively although it did not utilise the fund fully.
The non-planned scheme “Development of Urban Waqf Properties” which is implemented by Central Waqf Council has released lesser funds from NDA government as compared with the previous government. Kerala and Karnataka are the two states that have been benefiting largely under this scheme.