Enemy property bill to hit 1,519 properties in Uttar Pradesh alone

LUCKNOW: The enemy property bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, will affect 1,519 properties in UP. The Raja of Mahmudabad, who holds 936 properties across UP and Uttarakhand, will be the most affected. After the bill turns into an Act, the custodian appointed by the Central government will take control of all the properties identified as 'enemy property', seizing the heir's right to ancestral property.

As many as 622 of the 1519 properties in UP are already vested with the 'custodian' and 897 are in the process. Sources at the custodian said that while the bill would now be sent to the legislative wing for ordaining the procedure to be followed, the custodian can only act once it receives guidelines from its Mumbai-based headquarters.

Retrospective amendment to the Enemy Property (EP) Act of 1968 will cause maximum impact to Raja of Mahmudabad. Some of his properties were given back to him after an SC order in 2005, which followed a longdrawn legal battle, only to be re-vested in the govern ment custodian on promulgation of the EP Ordinance of 2010.

As the Raja went against the same in the SC, his matter has since then been sub-judice. The Raja had also challenged the ordinance promulgated in January 2016 calling it "wholly arbitrary and violative" of his fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 21 of the Indian constitution.

Reacting to the passage of the bill, he said: "The government was in a rush to get this bill passed, motivated primarily to appease a limited section of a community with specific Hindutva views that are not upheld by its majority. I have hope in judiciary now. This will affect thousands of unheard voices."

Father of the present Raja Mahmudabad had migrated to Pakistan in 1957 while his mother Rani Kaniz Abid and he himself chose not to migrate and remained Indian citizens at all times. In 1965, after hostilities between India and Pakistan broke out, the Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order, 1962 was issued.

It was in 1973, when his father died in London, that Raja Mahmudabad inherited the properties under Oudh Estate Act, 1869 and as a citizen of India himself, contested to be handed over the properties.