Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI – During the recent debate on the Waqf Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha — already passed by both the Houses — multiple misleading claims were made by BJP MPs concerning Waqf properties.
Former Union Minister and Hamirpur MP Anurag Singh Thakur stated in Parliament that the Waqf Board had staked a claim on two islands of Beyt Dwarka in Gujarat.
“Sir, let’s talk about Beyt Dwarka. Claims were staked on the two island of Beyt Dwarka. Did Islam come before lord Krishna? I also heard that the Waqf Board is going to stake a claim on the Anand Bhawan and the National Herald. Will you hand them over to them?,” Thakur said in the Lok Sabha.
However, the claim about the Byte Dwarka was going around four years ago on the social media in 2021. It was claimed that the Waqf Board filed a petition in the Gujarat High Court claiming the land of the Byte Dwarka. At that time, Gujarat Waqf Board had clarified that it had not made any such claim about the Byte Dwarka.
“The petition that was filed in the High Court was regarding the Savai Pir Dargah near Shiyal Bet. The petition was not even filed by the Waqf Board, but a private Sunni trust filed the petition and we were just present as we are required,” said Sajjad Hira, Chairman of Gujarat State Waqf Board, while talking to local media.
At that time, BJP MP from Gujarat’s Jamanagar Poonam Maadam had also issued a statement clarifying that there is no such claim about the Beyt Dwarka.
“I spoke to the Law Minister and the Collector and found that the reference was to two islands named Shiyal Bet in Jafrabad, Amreli district. The judge had referred it to the vacation bench, possibly due to the similarity in the names. I believe it was a misunderstanding. I assure you that if it’s not, we will not allow any encroachment on Beyt Dwarka,” she clarified.
Despite these clarifications from the Waqf Board and the BJP MP herself about the false claims related to the Beyt Dwarka, Thakur repeated those false claims in the parliament.
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Another false claim was made by the BJP MP Sambit Patra stating that several Islamic countries Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Tunisia and Iraq don’t have any existence of the Waqf properties.
Another BJP MP Nishikant Dubey made similar claims saying that no Muslim country gives such rights to Waqf properties.
However, a report by the Altnews found that all these Muslim countries who were mentioned by Patra during his speech has the system of waqf properties. There are websites available online where all information related to the waqf properties of these countries are available. These claims were made by the government last year when the bill was being introduced in the parliament, which was later fact-checked. Patra and others made the claims again in the parliament despite it was proved false.
In a speech, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath also claimed that the Waqf board is staking a claim on the land of Kumbh Mela. But prominent fact-checker Mohammed Zubair revealed that the Waqf board had never made any such statement claiming the land of Kumbha mela. It was Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi, who is a great supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adityanath, made the provocative statement about the Kumbh’s land.
