UP Shia Waqf Board to launch housing scheme for community

Lucknow, May 8 (PTI) The Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board will launch a scheme for people from weaker sections within the community to provide them houses on its vacant lands and those freed from encroachment.

The housing scheme will be launched by the board soon, said Ali Zaidi, who completed one year as the board’s chairman on Monday.

This is for people who are from weaker sections within the Shia community, he told PTI and added that under the scheme, the board will provide its vacant land and those freed from encroachment to selected people for constructing a house in a 350 square feet area.

Zaidi said that a committee of the board will get the house constructed and its cost will have to be deposited by the allottee in fixed instalments. The board will charge a nominal amount for the maintenance of the house, he said.

The board’s chairman said the eligibility criteria under this scheme would be similar to those of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. The beneficiaries will be selected through a lottery, he said.

The board aims at providing housing to lower-middle class people who are living in rented accommodations and have not yet been able to get a house of their own constructed, Zaidi said.

Besides people getting houses, the income of the Waqf Board will also increase through this scheme, he said.

Zaidi said the scheme will be launched at the Imdad Hussain Karbala in Lucknow. For now, Lucknow, Amroha, Jaunpur, Bijnor and Muzaffarnagar have been selected for this scheme as these places have a large Shia population and Waqf land is in abundance, he said.

He said apart from this, the board is also planning to allot plots in commercial areas.

The board chairman claimed that Waqf properties are “soft targets” for the land mafia and said gangsters like Atiq Ahmad and Mukhtar Ansari had also occupied its properties

Zaidi said in his one-year tenure as chairman, the annual income of the board has increased from Rs 37 lakh to Rs 1.47 crore.