Hyderabad, May 15: In a new twist to the ongoing land encroachment controversy in Old City, the AP Wakf Board said that MIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi had constructed a boundary wall for the graveyard at Barkas without informing or taking the permission from the Wakf Board.
“Akbaruddin got the boundary wall constructed around the existing seven acre graveyard utilising the constituency development fund he is entitled to as an MLA. However, he did not take the permission of the board. As per the wakf rule, local representatives should take permission of the Wakf Board before undertaking any developmental works on the wakf property,” Wakf Board assistant secretary Syed Ahmed Ali told TOI.
As per survey number 22 dated June 6, 1984, the Wakf Board possessed 28 acres of graveyard land which following encroachments over the years has now been reduced to seven acres. According to Ali, Akbaruddin had complained that parts of the graveyard land has been encroached upon by Mohammad Pahalwan on four occasions in 2009 and 2010.
However, when Wakf Board officials went to Barkas to inspect the encroached land, they were denied entry by the encroachers. It was then that Akbaruddin decided to directly get the encroachers evicted, a move that finally resulted in the attack on the MLA by Pahalwan and his associates on April 30 this year.
According to sources, on finding that Pahalwan was not responding to Akbaruddin’s requests to vacate the government land encroached upon by him, the MIM approached the AP High Court. The court on January 18, this year, appointed the advocate commissioner to survey the graveyard land at Barkas and submit a report. “The advocate commissioner had completed the survey under heavy police security and is now in the process of submitting the report to the high court,” the sources claimed.
Apart from wakf land, hundreds of acres of government land too is said to have been encroached upon by powerful individuals in Old City. “With the help of the Hyderabad district collector, Akbaruddin has been restoring huge tracts of land that were encroached upon by Pahalwan and his associates,” a police officer said.
This includes nearly 100 acres of land in Bandlaguda village. In survey No 82/83 of that village, Pahalwan has allegedly encroached 19 acres of land earmarked by the state for housing purposes. But a bigger blow to the Old City encroachers was the restoration of 79 acres of land in survey No 103 in Bandlaguda village.
According to sources, about 25 acres of government land at Gurram Cheruvu and another 50 acres of wakf land at Karwan encroached upon by Pahalwan and his associates have been identified. Notices have been sent to the occupants and action would be taken very soon on these two encroachments, the sources added.
–SOURCE: TOI