By TwoCircles.net Staff reporter,
Aurangabad (Maharashtra): In an attempt to boost its panorama in Maharashtra, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has nominated retired judge Taher Shaikh as co-opted member of the party.
Shaikh, 70, who is presently the vice-president of the Society for the Retired Judges in Aurangabad, was selected by party office bearers on Monday. Shaikh had commissioned the state government’s 2007 enquiry related to waqf properties in the state.
Retired Judges Taher Shaikh
The formal announcement was made here under the directions of party’s national president Asaduddin Owaisi in the presence of state president Syed Moin, Aurangabad MLA Imtiyaz Jaleel, district president Javed Qureshi, party corporators and many other supporters.
Shaikh has served as a district judge in Yavatmal, Osmanabad and Nagpur districts across the state. After his retirement in 2001, he was appointed as a member of the Maharashtra State Administrative Tribunal.
Back in 2007, when senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari had levelled allegations of irregularities and corruption in the waqf board, the state government had appointed Shaikh as chairman for the Commission to investigate the alleged irregularities that allegedly involved 92,000 acres of waqf land across the state.
The judicial commission submitted its report in 2011, but it was charred in the accidental fire in Mantralaya in June 2012. The then INC-NC government ordered the Commission to again prepare the report, which was submitted later in May 2013.
Acting on the report on March 19, the minority development department sent a letter to wakf board CEO directing to suspend its regional officer Shaikh Zafar Shaikh Ibrahim posted at Nagpur for his alleged involvement in corrupt practices and initiate a departmental inquiry against him.
Shaikh’s entry is being viewed as a great asset to the party considering his vast judicial familiarity and his special knowledge related to state waqf properties that he acquired at the time of conducting the enquiry in respect of allegations of waqf property irregularities.
With his association he is supposed to elevate party and provide its members enough questions to ask to the INC, NCP and BJP leaders for their involvement in waqf properties’ irregularity.
After a surprising debut by winning two seats during the Maharashtra assembly elections in October 2014, the MIM recently grabbed headlines again when it earned the second position in the city’s civic elections by securing 25 seats out of 113.