Court rejects Waqf claim on Karbala Maidan land in MP

The district court in Indore has declared that 6.7 acres of the Karbala Maidan grounds in Indore city is not a Waqf property but belongs to the municipal corporation.

The civic body has won a "historic legal battle" that was going on since 1979, said Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargava.

A civil court had, in 2019, dismissed the corporation's plea seeking to stop illegal occupation of Karbala Maidan, against which a revision application was filed in the district court, he told reporters.

The Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board, Karbala Maidan Committee and others from the Muslim side were respondents, he said.

"The respondents have failed to prove that the suit property is a waqf property," district judge Narsingh Baghel said in his judgment passed on September 13.

The municipal corporation had argued that as per the Indore Municipal Act of 1909, and Madhya India Municipality Act of 1917 -- which were in operation during the rule of the Holkars before Independence -- and the Municipal Act of 1956, the ownership of all open lands, barring government and private properties, is vested in the civic body.

The defendants submitted that the erstwhile Holkar rulers had earmarked the land for immersion of Tazias during Muharram, and a mosque also stands there.

The Muslim community was in continuous possession of the land for nearly 200 years, they argued.

But the court accepted the municipal corporation's argument while holding that only a part of the land is being used for the last 150 years for immersion of Tazias.