BENGALURU: After the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department, it’s now the turn of the Minorities Welfare and Wakf department to lose files.
At a time when the state government has ordered for re-survey of Wakf properties across the state, the related files are reportedly missing in one of the districts.
As per documents available with Express, over 141 files related to Wakf properties at Lingasugur in Raichur district are missing. The tahsildar of Lingasuguru taluk has communicated this to higher authorities and said, “Over 141 files are missing and the process of preparing new files is on.”
This is the second survey ordered by the government. The first one was done when BJP was in power. To identify the encroached Wakf properties across the state, the then BJP government had formed a committee headed by Anwar Manippady, which submitted its report to the government.
According to officials of the Wakf and Minorities department, 70 per cent of the survey has been completed and to speed up the process, officials have communicated to Deputy Commissioners (DC) of all the concerned districts to complete the survey. “We have also informed the DCs to use private surveyors in case of shortage of government surveyors to complete the process fast,” said a senior official of the department.
However, department officials expressed concern over the missing files. “It’s not that we cant do survey or identify encroached land just because the files are missing. We have a second set of documents through which we can prepare new files. But the shocking thing is, how the files have gone missing, who is involved in this? These things need to be investigated,” said a senior official.
Sources in the department said, “Those who took the files definitely have an intention to encroach land or to regularise the encroached land.”