Enemy property heirs may get rights

[Nahraf]

My great-grandfather lost everything In India when he migrated to Pakistan including land and newly constructed house. We did not even get 10% of what our family owned in the region that was awarded to India. It was uphill battle from refugee camps to flat to house in 15 years. We don't have any relative left that can claim any property. Many properties of Muslims in India were seized by the government if one member of the family decided to leave for Pakistan. Now after 63 years they offer to return some of the property to legal heirs that live in India.

The Pioneer > Online Edition : >> Enemy property heirs may get rights

Enemy property heirs may get rights

PNS | New Delhi

The UPA Government seems to have succumbed to pressure from Muslim MPs in amending the Enemy Property (Amendment & Validation) Bill. The Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 2 by Minister of State (Home) Ajay Maken, will go back to the Cabinet. It will discuss the suggestion of Muslim MPs on allowing legal heirs of those who migrated to Pakistan to hold the inherited properties.

The Muslim MPs delegation had met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh several times during the past two weeks.

It is learned that Home Minister P Chidambaram, who was “dead against” such a provision, was forced to change his stand after a delegation of Muslim Central Ministers met him on Friday evening. The delegation, headed by Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, included Farooq Abdullah, E Ahamed and Sultan Ahmed.

“The Bill will be introduced in this session with some modifications on the right of legal heirs of those who migrated. These rights will be decided by courts, dealing with around 3,000 such cases across the country. We hope these modifications would ensure justice and remove apprehensions from the minds of people,” Khurshid told the media after meeting the Home Minister.

The Bill had proposed an amendment stipulating that Government custodianship of such enemy properties could not be challenged in the court. The Home Ministry was of the view that such a Bill was warranted since several persons had forged succession and adoption certificates and illegally made claims to properties.

On August 5, a delegation of Muslim MPs — led by Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Rehman Khan and Kurshid — met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and complained against the “adamancy” of the Home Minister. The move “will send a negative message” in the community, they added. According to the MPs, the Prime Minister telephoned the Home Minister “in front of us and directed him to freeze further proceedings on the Bill”.

One of the MPs said, “The PM told Chidambaram that he had to listen to the sentiments of our Muslim MPs too.” The PM assured the delegation that the “detrimental provisions”, including barring the approach to courts, would be removed.

The Government was at the receiving end for several years when several courts ruled against its custodianship of properties taken over under the Enemy Property Act. The properties of those who migrated to enemy counties, mainly Pakistan and Bangladesh, were taken over by Government. But several persons, who claimed to be heirs of those who had migrated, challenged the Government in courts.

A case in point was the 32-year-old legal battle between the Government and the legal heir of Raja of Mehmoodabad. His son, a Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh, won the case in 2005 in the Supreme Court. The properties, worth over hundreds of crores, were under the Government’s custody and most of the Government offices in Lucknow are working on this property. After winning the legal battle, the Raja’s heirs served notices to vacate these offices from their palatial complex.

The Home Ministry initiated the promulgation of an ordinance to strengthen the Act two months ago to plug the loopholes on the succession issue. The highest number of such litigations, around 1000, is from Uttar Pradesh.

 

[somebozo]

Indian government will go bankrupt if they start return all the looted property of Indian muslims. Such was the powerful sprit of Pakistan that people decided to lose behind everything for their own country. This was the very fact capitalized by anti-Pakistan mullahs who were more afraid of losing wealth. GOI did a good job of keep these mullahs on their payroll in exchange of favour but when once the culling of all Muslim property was complete, these mullahs found themselves at dead end. Thats where we made the mistake of welcoming them into our dear Pakistan. The rest is all infront of us. From anti ahmedia riots incited by Mullah Mardoodi to todays talibans and religious terrorists.,

 

[Nothing]

Indian government will go bankrupt if they start return all the looted property of Indian muslims. Such was the powerful sprit of Pakistan that people decided to lose behind everything for their own country. This was the very fact capitalized by anti-Pakistan mullahs who were more afraid of losing wealth. GOI did a good job of keep these mullahs on their payroll in exchange of favour but when once the culling of all Muslim property was complete, these mullahs found themselves at dead end. Thats where we made the mistake of welcoming them into our dear Pakistan. The rest is all infront of us. From anti ahmedia riots incited by Mullah Mardoodi to todays talibans and religious terrorists.,

Same with GOP , if they come up with such a bill . India have money to pay back but what about GOP..............

 

[Nahraf]

Indian government will go bankrupt if they start return all the looted property of Indian muslims.

They are addressing the properties of those Indian Muslims that still live in India. The properties of Muslims who left for Pakistan are not been considered.

 

[secularguy]

Found this Article:
Bitter realty
SPECIAL REPORT

Legal wrangles, encroachment and corruption plague hundreds of ‘enemy properties’ across the country

By Syed Nazakat

Raja Amir Mohammad Khan His 'enemy property' includes the Metropole Hotel at Nainital, Butler Palace and half of Hazratgunj in Lucknow, worth several hundred crores / Photo: Arvind Jain

Before leaving for Pakistan in 1962, the relatives of Dr Anisul Haq gifted their six houses in Delhi to his father, Aminul Haq. Three decades later on August 28, 1992, they came to India to confirm the gift deal. They appeared in Delhi’s Tis Hazari court and gave the power of attorney in his favour. Yet, the government refused to accept Haq as the rightful owner of the property.

It has been a long-drawn out legal battle over the ownership of the property, with proceedings piling up in courts and a grim showing of unhealed wounds of Partition. “We have been living in this city [Old Delhi] for generations. My relatives gifted these properties to my father. My father has passed them on to me and my brother. What is the state’s business to declare our properties as enemy property?” asks Aminul Haq.

In government records, Haq’s property is listed as ‘enemy property’. So are 2,186 properties worth thousands of crores across the country. The enemy property is an issue which remains to be settled between India and Pakistan. The problem began after the 1965 Indo-Pak War, when India declared Pakistan an enemy nation and the properties of those who migrate to Pakistan after the war were declared enemy properties. Interestingly, Pakistan had sold off most of the properties of those who left for India.

In national politics, enemy property is a big issue. On September 7, the Union government decided not to repromulgate an ordinance on enemy property and chose to bring up the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill 2010 in the winter session of Parliament with three amendments. The bill was supposed to replace a 1968 Act pertaining to enemy property.

The first amendment allows enemy property to be claimed by its lawful heirs, provided they can prove their Indian citizenship within 120 days. The second one puts limitation on courts, allowing the Custodian of Enemy Property of India to control the assets. The final amendment ensures that the legal rights of present occupants of enemy properties remain unaffected.

In Delhi alone, there are 66 such properties which are now occupied by tenants or house private/government institutions. Outside the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, the home of Fatima Bi, an enemy property, has been turned into a police station. In the neighbouring Sadar Bazar locality, Shaikh Muhammad Haroon, 65, is unable to understand why the custodian department is not leaving his home despite the ownership order he has from court.

Amjid Ali, a shopkeeper in the same area, bought a house from a Hafiz Mohamed Siddique in 1999. A few weeks later, he received a notice from the custodian department declaring the house an enemy property. Ali was asked to pay rent to the government for living in his own house because the property’s earlier owners had gone to Pakistan. Properties of the Waqf Board, including the Musafirkhana (rest house) in Ballimaran in Old Delhi, are also at stake. Ghulam Kibriya, a descendant of celebrated Unani physician and veteran Congress leader Hakim Ajmal Khan, passed it on to Maulana Farooq Wasfi in 1974. He leased the building outside the Musafirkhana to shopkeepers to raise money for its maintenance. Twenty-three years later, the custodian department declared it enemy property. Wasfi, along with shopkeepers, challenged the order in the Delhi High Court. The case is pending in court.

Zameer Ahmed Jumlana, president of the Delhi unit of the Indian National League, has been campaigning on behalf of the victims for years. “The records are being manipulated to cover up a big scam. There are contradictions in different enemy property lists and then money is being collected as rent against these properties. Nobody knows how the rent is fixed and where it goes,” says Jumlana. He says the biggest problem with the Enemy Property Act of 1968 is that even after 100 years, a property can be simply snatched from a person just on an unverified complaint and then the onus is on the person to prove that his forefathers were Indian nationals.

“The custodian department should check revenue records and do in-house verification of documents before giving a notice to any individual,” says Jumlana. As of now, the complainant is not required to provide any proof that the property in question ever belonged to a Pakistani national. Jumlana has kept a letter written to him by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on November 23, 2009, saying that he would bring the matter to the notice of the Delhi chief minister. “Nothing happened since then,” says Jumlana.

At a small office in Kaiser-i-Hind building in Mumbai, the employees of the Custodian of Enemy Property pore over thousands of files and visit courts every day. Chief custodian Dinesh Singh shuttles between UP, Delhi, Gujarat, Kolkata and Mumbai to retain control over the properties. According to the custodian department, there are 13 listed enemy properties in Mumbai, and all of them, barring two, are located in posh south Mumbai. Dinesh’s deputy, Kanchan Seth, says that any real estate, if it can be proved that it was owned by a Pakistani between 1965 and 1977, can be declared as enemy property. She declines to comment on whether records have been manipulated to cover up corruption. However, she clarifies that there is no time limit to declare the property as enemy property: “On receipt of a complaint, and after verification we can declare the property as enemy property and take control of it.”

Not too far from the custodian office is Kishori Court, a bungalow facing the Worli end of the sea, which is valued over Rs 400 crore. When actor Hamida Kishwari Begum, its owner, left for Pakistan in the early 1960s, the bungalow was auctioned by the Bombay municipal authority to recover the house tax. When the matter reached court, the custodian department was slammed for its inability to maintain and protect the property. The court also questioned the right of the custodian department to sell the property when the title and ownership remained with Hamida Begum. Her ownership rights were restored only to be claimed by dozens of other people today.

Similarly, Moti Cinema, another enemy property at Khetwadi in Mumbai, is in desperate need of development like Kishori Court. The Jinnah House in Mumbai, however, is exempted from the purview of the properties bill. The ministry of external affairs directly looks after the building.

The most famous case of enemy property in India is that of Raja Amir Mohammad Khan. His father, Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan, the ruler of Mahmoodabad in Uttar Pradesh, like many other Muslim feudal rulers of north India, left for Pakistan in 1957. In 1965, his assets in Uttar Pradesh were declared enemy property and seized by the government. The assets (over 600 properties) include the posh Metropole Hotel at Nainital, Butler Palace and half of Hazratgunj in Lucknow and are worth several hundred crores.

After a 32-year-long battle, the Supreme Court in 2005 accepted Raja Amir Mohammad Khan’s contention and his right to inherit all these properties. But in July 2010, following an ordinance, the custodian department took control of the assets.

In West Bengal there are about 360 enemy properties worth thousands of crores and 200 of them are in Kolkata. When the owners of those properties left for East Pakistan (Bangladesh), they either left their houses vacant or left them in the custody of tenants.

Unlike India, Bangladesh no longer treats the properties of those who left the country to settle in India as enemy property. “During Mujibur Rahman’s prime ministership, Bangladesh stopped terming the properties left behind by Hindus as enemy properties. We must therefore do away with the name enemy property,” says Ainul Hoque, a Kolkata-based social worker.

The state government has turned a blind eye to encroachment of enemy properties. “If enemy properties don’t have claimants, then the government should use it for the welfare of people, as in the case of Aga Khan’s property in Beleghata, Kolkata, which has been turned into a memorial,” says Shahanshah Jahangir, who heads the Bengal chapter of the Indian Union Muslim League.

Shopping malls are being erected in enemy properties and many plots are being encroached. The house of freedom fighter Shaheed Suhrawardy in Kolkata was sold to a Marwari family by the authorities. Though Muslim organisations have pleaded with the heritage commission to acquire the house, no action has been taken so far.

Likewise, the house of Iskander Mirza, the first president of Pakistan, in Murshidabad, has been encroached by local people. “Yes, the state government allows such encroachment. It also allows groups with vested interests to do business on these properties,” says a retired bureaucrat. “The government shows a limited number of enemy properties on record, as most of them have been illegally sold,” says Jahangir.

Hoque says the government should bring about legislation that gives the ownership rights to the tenants/relatives of those who left for Pakistan. “The government must use such huge properties which have not been estimated yet. Even if the legislation gives some rights to relatives of those people, it should have a provision by which people who are using it illegally are kept out.” As of now, there seems to be no end to the bitter legal fight over the properties, which are claimed by the relatives of those who crossed the border.
with Anupam Dasgupta and Rabi Banerjee

July 2, 2010: Union home ministry promulgates ordinance saying courts are not entitled to alter status of enemy properties

August 5: Amir Mohammad Khan challenges the ordinance in Delhi High Court. Says it is an attempt to circumvent Supreme Court order

August 6: Court refuses to stay the ordinance; seeks the government's explanation. Government decides to allow the ordinance to lapse

August 27: Government introduces amendment under which India-born heirs to enemy property will have to overcome legal challenges posed by current occupants

September 7: Cabinet decides against re-promulgating ordinance. Agrees to table fresh version of The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill 2010 in the winter session of Parliament

source:
Bitter realty