AHMEDABAD: Because the Centre is about to introduce a invoice to amend the Wakf Act, 1995, aiming at bringing transparency in waqf boards’ functioning and correct registration of properties, it’s value remembering that Vadodara’s Gaekwad rule had legislated on this subject practically a century in the past.
In 1926-27, the Baroda state had enacted the Mussalman Wakf Act for the correct administration and regulation of the properties which can be donated by folks for spiritual, pious and charitable functions.Amongst different provisions just like the election of mutavallis, the laws introduced in by Sayajirao Gaekwad III included penalties for individuals who submitted deceptive statements of accounts.
The Gaekwadi legislation’s penalty provision acknowledged that if any individual furnishes a “false, deceptive or unfaithful” assertion which has not been audited, he was liable to be punished with a high quality “which can prolong to 5 hundred rupees, or, within the case of a second or subsequent offence, with a high quality which can prolong to 2 thousand rupees”. In response to native historian and the Prime Minister Museum & Library Society member, Rizwan Qadri, the penal provision was eliminated after the legislation was amended in 1943 after the demise of the Maharaja. “This piece of laws had very nicely laid down guidelines and the waqf properties within the Gaekwadi state was once regulated by it for over 20 years,” he mentioned.
With the nation turning into unbiased, the Wakf Act, 1954 regulated waqf properties till a 1995 Act changed it, giving better powers to waqf boards. Contemplating the alienation of waqf properties by these managing these trusts, the Centre amended the legislation in 2013, utterly prohibiting any sort of sale of waqf properties. Even the Supreme Courtroom upheld the perpetual nature of properties vested for such functions. Final week, the cupboard reportedly cleared the modification invoice with practically 40 modifications, primarily for the registration of the properties with the district collectorate and the appointment of girls in state waqf boards.
