Wakf Board earns record revenue: Mohd Saleem

Telangana State Wakf Board to increase the rental income has started to yield positive results with the Board succeeding to generate close to Rs 4 crore worth of extra revenue in the last one year.

According to Chairman, Wakf Board, Mohammed Saleem, in the last one year a slew of measures have been taken-up to enhance the Board’s revenue. Extra stress was given to regulate and at the same time plug loopholes in the overall management of the Wakf Board.

Wakf Board’s revenue receipts through its property were Rs 6.32 Crore in the fiscal year 2016-17. However, during 2017-18, the Wakf Board has already surpassed last year’s collections with overall revenue of over Rs. 10 crore. “Apart from all this, we have also collected rental arrears worth Rs. 2 crore during last six months,” Saleem said.

The Wakf Board Chairman admitted that the process of leasing out large Wakf



properties by calling tenders has been delayed due to various reasons. “Once we manage to lease-out prime properties of the Wakf Board, we can easily achieve revenue of anywhere between Rs 20 crore and 30 crore per annum,” he said.

In last one year we have taken many initiatives to protect Wakf properties in the State, apart from co-ordinating and holding joint meetings with revenue and police officials. We have sought services of senior advocates to attend court cases pertaining to Wakf properties and also appointed legal experts for proper advice, Saleem said.

The Chairman of the Wakf Board said that for the first time in the Board’s history, the records section has been sealed on the instruction of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. The State government has decided to translate Persian and Arabic documents of Wakf properties into English and later digitise them, he added.