Pointing to the actual extent of waqf lands being much greater than those that have been recorded, a pilot project launched by the state government has detected over 1,700 new waqf properties in just two districts of Pune and Parbhani. The state will now expand this ground-level survey to all districts across Maharashtra.

State government statistics suggest Maharashtra has around 93,418 acre of Waqf land spread over about 23,566 registered properties, with maximum land parcels in Aurangabad division, which was part of the dominion of the Nizam of Hyderabad (57,802 acre), followed by 9,310 acre in Pune division, 9,260 acre in Nagpur division, 8,350 acre in Nashik, 5,941 acre in the Konkan and 2,755 acre in Amravati.

However, most of these prime land parcels are under encroachments and officials admit that the processes of maintaining the records of these lands and protecting them are full of lacunae.

In 2017, the state minority development department launched a Rs 1.08 crore pilot project to map these properties and the extent of encroachments on them in Pune and Parbhani.

"The survey of auqafs in Parbhani and Pune conducted by the Settlement Commissioner and the Directorate of Land Records detected 273 new properties in Parbhani and 1,465 in Pune. When the last auqaf survey was conducted in 2002, Parbhani and Pune had a total of 1,189 and 153 properties respectively," said a senior official from the department, adding that the survey excluded cantonment areas.

"This includes properties not identified in previous surveys and those which were donated through fresh Waqf deeds," he explained.

The official added that of the 273 new properties in Parbhani, 15 were found to have been encroached and the number of such encumbered properties in Pune was five.

He said in Pune, the number of newly-identified waqf lands stood at 1,636.69 hectares, with the highest number of properties being detected in Baramati taluka (41 properties spread over 470 hectares), followed by Shirur (297 hectares and 140 properties). The lowest amount of Waqf land was found in Bhor (four properties spanning 1.06 hectare) and the survey found no auqafs in neighbouring Velha taluka. This land included around 510 hectares of non-agricultural and 1,126 hectares of agricultural land. The extent of Waqf lands in Parbhani is yet to be calculated.

Waqf means the permanent dedication by a person professing Islam, of any movable or immovable property for any purpose recognised by the Muslim law as pious, religious or charitable. The institution of Wakf in India is 800 years old and began when Muslim rulers donated huge land parcels for charity.

The last survey was conducted in 2002 and a fresh survey is happening one-and-half decade later as against the rule which stipulated that it much happen every 10 years.