Bengaluru: Tejasvi Surya, the firebrand Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, Friday hit out at Karnataka’s IT minister, Priyank Kharge, over the filing of a police complaint against the Lok Sabha representative from Bengaluru South for “falsely” claiming that a Haveri-based farmer had died by suicide after an alleged land grab by the Karnataka Waqf Board.
Calling Kharge, son of Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge, an “incompetent dynast”, Surya alleged that the state minister had filed a case against the MP for “spreading misinformation”.
“Priyank Kharge is a typical incompetent Congress dynast who thinks he can do whatever he wishes with the state machinery. But every time, his incompetence puts him back in his place. Yesterday, when I tweeted about a farmer’s suicide in Haveri due to waqf land grab, he got the Haveri police to register a false case, accusing me of spreading misinformation. He got the police to not only lie, but he even intimidated the media to hide the reality,” Surya posted on X.
He posted a clip from a media channel in which the father of the deceased farmer says how changes in Pahani by the Waqf Board drove his son to take his own life.
Surya had also stood by Jagdambika Pal, Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, when the latter visited and met farmers in Vijayapura, Hubballi and other places in northern Karnataka Thursday.
The central government this year introduced two bills, Waqf (Amendment) Bill and the Mussalman Wakf (Repeal) Bill, in the Lok Sabha with an aim to streamline the state Waqf Board’s work and ensure the efficient management of waqf properties.
The issue has since gathered steam across the country, with the BJP’s core support base calling for abolishing the Waqf Act and the board itself. In Karnataka, the contentious topic has put pressure on the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government, fuelling tensions on both sides of the political and ideological divide.
Also Read: How Modi govt is proposing to amend Waqf Act & why critics call it harbinger of ‘Collector Raj’
‘BJP turning Vijayapura into a communal laboratory’
A “fact-finding committee” of the BJP, headed by senior leader Govind Karjol, has submitted its report to Pal, indicating various instances of land grab by the Karnataka Waqf Board.
The issue was triggered after farmers in Vijayapura’s Indi Taluk and Honvada village were issued notices by the Waqf Board to vacate their lands on 4 October.
Ever since, the BJP and its ally Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), have levelled accusations against the Karnataka government of “appeasement politics” by allowing the stealing of land by terming it waqf property.
The issue has gained communal colour as Muslims are seen to back the Congress in Karnataka.
“If Hindus stay divided by caste, your property will become waqf property,” Basanagouda R Patil (Yatnal), BJP legislator from Vijayapura, said at an election rally in Haveri’s Shiggaon Friday.
Surya has alleged that the state government is planning to turn farmers’ lands into waqf property to consolidate Muslim votes in bypolls, according to a statement from former CM and BJP leader Basavaraj Bommai’s office.
The BJP has even termed the matter a case of “land jihad”, an extension of pro-Hindu groups’ string of conspiracy theories that Muslims are trying to take over public land and those belonging to Hindus. The other jihads, according to the BJP and right-wing groups, are “love jihad” and even “vote jihad”.
With growing charges of graft, including in the Mysuru Urban Development Authority, state excise department and Valmiki development corporation, Siddaramaiah finds himself cornered further with the developments in the waqf issue.
The Congress has called it a “political conspiracy” by the BJP. Siddaramaiah last weekend directed that all notices issued to farmers be revoked.
“In the last 10 years, the BJP that was in power in the state and at the Centre and which showed immense concern for waqf property, is now trying to convert Vijayapura into a communal laboratory,” M.B. Patil, minister for large and medium industries, told reporters Friday.
‘Waqf mafia’
In 2012, Anwar Manippady, former chairman of the Karnataka State Minorities Commission and former state vice-president of the BJP, led a three-member committee to probe the allegations of encroachments and irregularities in the Karnataka Waqf Board.
He submitted the report to then Karnataka CM D.V. Sadananda Gowda and it was tabled during the B.S. Yediyurappa-led BJP government in the state, but was never made public nor acted upon, according to people aware of the developments.
The findings of the report, which ThePrint has accessed, were stark; it went as far as to call the alleged irregularities in the state’s waqf properties the “biggest scam after the 2G scam”.
“It is shocking to observe that out of the estimated Rs 4.10 lakh crore worth of waqf properties, Rs 2 lakh crore (worth of property) has been either encroached upon or sold by the chairman and members of successive Waqf Boards. In most cases, prominent political leaders from the minority community are deeply involved in the misuse of waqf properties,” states the report.
The report documents the alleged encroachment of waqf property by Congress president Kharge, former Union minister K. Rahman Khan, late Karnataka CM Dharam Singh and Karnataka’s incumbent minister for waqf Zameer Ahmed Khan, among others. Several political leaders and others named in the report have since contested the findings in court.
“No action was taken at all,” Manippady told ThePrint Friday. He added that Karnataka’s Upa Lokayukta Justice N. Ananda had endorsed the 2012 report and presented another report to the government around 2020.
“They (BJP) lost a lovely opportunity to nail the Congress,” Manippady said, adding that the “scam by opposition leaders ran into several thousand crores”.
He was even called to present the report before Pal on 14 October in Delhi, but the entire Opposition staged a walkout, alleging that the parliamentary panel was not functioning in accordance with rules.
The report states that there is a systematic modus operandi by influential politicians, whom it terms as “waqf mafia”, to siphon funds and land holdings from the Waqf Board. It adds that there was a severe lack of accountability in implementing the Waqf Acts of 1954 and 1995, insinuating that officials connived with encroachers.
The report also makes recommendations, including handing over the matter to the Lokayukta, and minority welfare department identifying waqf properties in various districts and collecting rent and using the lands for the uplift of the Muslim community.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: Waqf boards are India’s big urban landlords. But whose interest are they serving?
