New Delhi: Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi seems to be in an overdrive in his second innings as the minister incharge for the welfare and uplift of the Indian minorities.

After having announced that the ministry has drawn up a blueprint to ensure scholarships to five crore students from different minority communities of the nation, half of which would be girls, Naqvi has made decisive moves to strike down the Waqf land mafia. The mafia had enjoyed a free run in the UPA and Congress-led regimes in the past.

The ministry had launched an ambitious programme to geo-tag all waqf properties in the country in the last term, and the minister said the progress was on a “war footing”. The minister announced this while chairing a meeting of the Central Waqf Council (CWC) in New Delhi.

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The programme aims at keeping precise digital records of such properties so that their ownership could not be disputed and thus windows to encroachment opened.

“Geo-tagging and digitalisation will ensure transparency and safety of Waqf records. For the first time since Independence, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi led Government has decided to provide 100 per cent funding to develop schools, colleges, ITIs, polytechnics, hospitals, multi-purpose community hall ‘Sadbhav Mandap’ on Waqf land under ‘Pradhanmantri Jan Vikas Karykram’ (PMJVK),” Naqvi said.

This programme is being carried out with the help of IIT Roorkee and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

While only 90 districts had been identified for minority communities’ development during the last term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this term it has been expanded to include 308 districts of the country. There are around 5.77 lakh registered waqf properties across the country.