Waqf Board may be re-constituted in a month: Delhi govt

New Delhi: The process to re-constitute the Delhi Waqf Board, which was dissolved last year, had begun and the seven-member panel might be formed in the next one month, a government official said today.

The issue was raised at a meeting of the Delhi Assembly's Minority Welfare Committee, headed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and former Waqf Board chairman Amanatullah Khan.

"The committee was told that the new board could come up in the next one month," said the official.

The process would be launched by publishing a list of the Mutawalli (managers of Waqf property) voters. These 48 voters would elect one of the four members of the board, he added.

The Waqf Board comprises four elected and three nominated members. The Delhi government nominates a social activist, an Islamic scholar and one of its officials as members to it.

The elected members are those chosen by the Mutawallis and the Bar Council, besides an MP and an MLA.

The board, which looks after the Waqf properties in Delhi, had been a bone of contention between the ruling AAP and the office of the Lieutenant Governor (LG).

The then LG Najeeb Jung had, in October last year, dissolved the board constituted by the Arvind Kejriwal-led government and referred the matter related to "irregularities" in it to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

There were also corruption charges regarding appointments made to the board under the tenure of Khan and the Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB) had launched a probe into an alleged "recruitment scam" in the body.