After claiming ownership of a village in Tamil Nadu, the Waqf Board has now asserted ownership of an entire village in Bihar. The Bihar Waqf Board has sent notices to seven villagers in Govindpur, a village where 95% of the residents are Hindus, demanding that they vacate the land within 30 days.
AajTak reported that seven people living in Govindpur, located 30 kilometers from Patna, have received notices stating that the land they occupy belongs to the Waqf, and they must vacate it. The villagers, however, countered saying that the land has been in their families since their grandfathers' time.
Brijesh Ballabh Prasad, Rajkishore Mehta, Ramlal Sao, Malti Devi, Sanjay Prasad, Sudip Kumar, and Surendra Vishwakarma, have received notices from the Bihar State Sunni Waqf Board. After receiving these notices, all seven landowners filed a petition in the Patna High Court.
The High Court has said that the land has been in the names of the seven petitioners' descendants since 1910.
Earlier this month, when Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju introduced the Waqf (Amendment) Bill-2024, he expressed shock at how some government and private lands were declared Waqf properties. He questioned the unfettered powers granted to the Waqf Boards by the Congress-led UPA in 2013.
During his hour-long address in the Lok Sabha, Rijiju informed the house that in a village in Tamil Nadu's Tiruchirappalli district, the entire headquarters of the Surat Municipal Corporation had been declared Waqf property. He asked, "How can this happen? Is a municipal corporation someone's private property? How can municipal land be declared Waqf property?"
Rijiju also mentioned that a village in Tiruchirappalli, which has a 1,500-year-old history, had been declared Waqf property. "In Tiruchirappalli district, there is a 1,500-year-old Sundareswarar Temple. A poor villager there went to sell his 1.2 acres of land, only to be told that his entire village is Waqf property," the minister said. "Just imagine, an entire village with a 1,500-year-old history has been declared Waqf property."