Just a week ahead of the bye-polls, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s Congress government is scrambling to contain accusations by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)) of enabling ‘land jihad’. The BJP, which launched an indefinite strike on Tuesday, November 5, has accused the Congress government of allowing the Karnataka State Board of Auqaf to issue notices to farmers and “gobble up” their land. While the government has found a stop-gap measure to salvage the situation, arriving at a permanent solution will not be an easy task due to a judgement delivered by the Supreme Court on Waqf properties.

Rumblings of disquiet began in early October, during the Waqf Adalats that Minister for Minority Welfare BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan held across the state. Things took a serious turn after some farmers from Vijayapura district met Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya about notices they had received from the Waqf Board claiming the land. Since then, farmers in several villages have said that they too had been issued notices or had discovered the name of the Waqf Board on their land records. 

Following widespread outrage, Siddaramaiah on October 29 directed that all such notices to farmers be withdrawn and assured farmers that they would not be evicted. 

The row comes at a time when the Union government has proposed amendments to the Waqf Act 1995. The proposed amendments have been criticised by a cross-section of people who say that if passed, it will increase the risk of misuse, rake up communal tensions, and undermine minority rights.

Waqf is a concept under Islamic law in which an asset is dedicated for a particular religious or charitable purpose by donating the asset/property to God, effectively making the donation permanent and unalterable. Once donated as Waqf, it cannot become private property. Even today, the Waqf Board only administers the properties, which are primarily for four purposes: graveyards, orphanages, mosques, and dargahs. 

The flare-up 

Towards the end of October, Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya claimed that the Waqf Board was trying to claim 1,500 acres of land belonging to farmers in Honavad village in Vijayapura district. However, Vijayapura district in-charge minister MB Patil said that while farmers in other villages had been issued notices, no farmer in Honavad had been issued such a notice by the Waqf Board. An error in the gazette notification of 1974 was the reason for the confusion, he said. 

On October 30, houses and properties owned by Muslims in Kadakol village in Savanur taluk were attacked, allegedly by Hindu residents, after rumours spread that the local Waqf Board had issued notices to farmers claiming that the land belonged to them. Five people were injured in the stone-pelting. In the following days, media reports spoke of notices issued by the Waqf Board in several districts, including Kalaburagi, Chitradurga, Haveri, Vijayapura, Yadgir, Dharwad, and Gadag. 

As these reports surfaced, the BJP upped the ante, projecting the Waqf Board as a “land grab” agency and accusing it of carrying out “land jihad.” 

Several BJP leaders have written to the 31-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) formed to hear concerns about the proposed amendments to the Waqf Act. Tejasvi urged the JPC to speak to the farmers in Vijayapura district. BJP leader Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who has been raising this issue for some years, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding that Waqf properties be nationalised. A section of Hindu religious leaders too jumped on the bandwagon, writing to Modi seeking the repeal of the Waqf Act 1995. Lingayat seers lent support to the BJP’s state-wide protests on November 4. 

The problem

As the issue gained traction, farmers across the state began lining up at government offices and private internet service centres to check whether their Record of Rights, Tenancy, and Crops (RTC) mentioned Waqf in column 11. 

The RTC, also called a pahani, is a document that records ownership details, extent of land, soil type, etc. Column 9 of the RTC lists the name of the absolute owner, while Column 11 titled ‘Rights and Liabilities’ mentions encumbrances such as loans, stay orders, etc., and also lists people who have absolute and clear rights over the property.

The long Deepavali holiday weekend only made matters worse as local officials were unavailable to farmers who feared they were about to lose their land. Several farmers’ leaders warned of protests if their land was taken away. 

Naveen Hebbali of Havanagi village in Hangal taluk, Haveri district, told TNM that he checked his RTC on October 30 and found to his dismay that Column 11 mentioned Waqf Board. “We still cultivate the land. It’s just my mother and me, and we have no other family. I’m in shock.” 

Naveen says the four acres he owns have been in his family for about 50 years since his grandfather purchased it. He has now reached out to local farmers’ leaders for help.

“How did this appear on the RTC? There has to be some notice or a government order for this to turn up on the records, but nobody received anything,” said Mallikarjun Ballari, Haveri district secretary of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and Hasiru Sene. He pointed to examples of land being acquired for roads and other projects where the government has a notification process and compensation is given. 

“We learnt of this issue from media reports. So far, we have found four farmers in Hangal taluk whose RTCs show Waqf Board written on them,” he said. 

“Many farmers still don’t know this is happening, and those who are aware don’t know whom to ask for answers because government offices are closed. We are still waiting for answers,” Mallikarjun said. 

Tip of the iceberg 

The situation that farmers find themselves in has risen out of legal developments going back several decades, according to Mujibulla Zaffari, a retired KAS officer who was former Chief Executive Officer of the Waqf Board. 

Mujibulla explained that before Independence, numerous charitable endowments had been made to Hindus and Muslims by various rulers and individuals. During the Wodeyars’ rule, they were regulated under the Mysuru Muzrai Manual of 1934. In 1974, the state government decided to transfer Waqf properties to the Waqf Board under the Waqf Act 1954. 

In the meanwhile, Karnataka passed two laws abolishing inams – the Karnataka Inams Abolition Act 1954 and the Karnataka Certain Inams Abolition Act 1977 – and began wide-ranging land reforms starting in the 1960s with the enactment of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act in 1961.

“These laws gave tenants land rights under the slogan ‘land to the tiller’ and over 79,000 acres of a total of 1,17,000 acres of Waqf land were granted to farmers through this process,” Mujibulla said. 

In 1998, a bench of Justices AS Anand and VN Khare of the Supreme Court ruled in the Sayyed Ali and Others vs Andhra Pradesh Waqf Board case that property once declared Waqf would remain so. 

Mujibulla said that the notices have been issued to farmers since 2017 under Section 128 of the Land Revenue Act. This was done on the directions of the Law Department, which cited the 1998 Supreme Court ruling that the land given to farmers earlier under the three specific laws was Waqf land, and the Waqf Board must reclaim it as such.

According to documents accessed by TNM, the Minority Welfare Department wrote to the Law Department in July 2017, seeking clarification on whether the 1998 SC ruling was applicable to Waqf properties granted under Karnataka’s Inams Abolition laws and the Land Reforms Act. During this time, the Congress government was in power and Tanveer Sait was Minorities Welfare Department minister.

The Minority Department also sought an opinion on legislative measures that the government could take to retrieve the properties, or alternative measures “in case the affected lands are not taken back for the continuance of Waqf.”

In reply, the Law Department quoted the SC judgement, which held that “once a Waqf always a Waqf” and said, “Grant of patta or any kind of minor Inams under any of the Inam laws cannot take away the original dedication of the property constituting Waqf... Even if any occupancy rights are granted to any individual or group of individuals, it continues to be Waqf property only. Therefore, the properties which the state government claims to have vested in the government by virtue of Inam Abolition Laws or Land Reforms Act have no juridical significance. There cannot be change of vesting or dedication of Waqf property.”

Finally, the Law Department said that in the light of the SC ruling, it was of the view that “there is no scope for application of either the Inam Abolition Laws or Land Reforms Act” to Waqf land. In effect, Waqf land that was given away to cultivators through these laws would still remain Waqf. 

Quoting this opinion of the Law Department, the Minorities Welfare Department wrote to the Chief Executive Officer of the Waqf Board in December 2017 and said, “You are directed to initiate immediate action to recover Waqf lands acquired by individuals as well as groups and to take legal action against encroachers” who obtained land through the implementation of the inams abolition and land reforms laws. 

After this, the Waqf Board asked the Regional Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners to take action regarding the restoration of the Waqf properties. 

A senior bureaucrat confirmed that the government was apprised of these developments by the Department of Minorities on November 2. “For now, the CM has directed that notices issued to farmers who were granted land under these laws will be withdrawn. However, notices issued for the recovery of land that was encroached upon by other means will remain in force.”

However, Deputy Commissioners (DC) that TNM spoke to said they were not aware of the Supreme Court order or the 2017 opinion of the Law Department. 

A DC working in a district where farmers had received such notices, said, “This is a routine process and is being carried out based on the 1974 gazette notification of Waqf properties. The Waqf Board’s name is being added to Column 11 to prevent people from buying Waqf property by mistake. I recall handling such cases when I was Assistant Commissioner around 2012, based on Waqf Board requests.” 

He also said that after a Waqf Adalat was held by the Minority Welfare Minister recently, there was a request from the Waqf Board to ensure that Waqf land was not alienated. “All land records are verified (before a title is settled either way), and in many instances, these cases end up in court,” the DC said.

Another Deputy Commissioner denied any knowledge of the Waqf reclaiming lands based on the SC order. “This is a routine process based on the 1973-74 notification. The Waqf records haven’t been updated since. The Revenue Department only makes the entry in Column 11, but it doesn’t decide on the title. Ownership can only be decided in the Waqf tribunal,” he said. 

In August 2024, the Karnataka High Court said that changing the name of a private owner to the name of the Waqf Board in land records in the absence of an inquiry does not entitle the Waqf Board to the property.

A woman in Raichur district had filed a writ petition in the High Court after local officials wrongly interpreted the directions of the Regional Commissioner. Local revenue officials deleted the name of the woman and inserted the name of the Waqf Board as the owner of the land based on a faulty interpretation of instructions. The High Court ruled in her favour. 

What next?

On the government’s next move, the official said that for now, the government had directed that the notices be withdrawn. “There was no provision in the Inams abolition and Land Reform laws to exempt inam, waqf, or muzrai lands. This situation requires deeper consideration.” 

Mujibulla said that since the land had been granted to the cultivators, it had changed hands many times—it was sold, passed on to descendants and family members, converted into use for other purposes, and urbanisation had also occurred. 

“When the land was given to farmers, it was done according to the laws of the time. The situation is traumatic for the farmers who received the notice. If all the farmers get together and petition the Supreme Court about these circumstances, perhaps the situation can be resolved,” Mujibulla said.