Waqf property dispute: Clerics plan to lay siege to Congress offices

NEW DELHI: Prominent Muslim clerics, alleging land grab of Waqf property by Congress leaders, have threatened to launch a nationwide agitation against the party by the monthend and target all Congress offices in politically important states.

Addressing a press conference in Delhi on Tuesday, Maulana Kalbe Jawad, an influential cleric and the head priest of the country’s largest Shia mosque, the Shahi Ashafi Mosque in Lucknow, said a coordinated protest will also target all Congress constituencies in the battleground state of UP.

The press conference was also addressed by representatives of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the largest muslim organisations in the country. The clerics are demanding police action against Ahmed Patel, the political secretary of Congress President Sonia Gandhi for getting “devotees arrested” for protesting against the alleged land grab in Delhi and elsewhere.

On Monday, thousands of protestors were detained for attempting to agitate outside the Congress headquarters in Delhi, which led to traffic snarls in the national capital region.

A similar agitation called by the clerics on the matter was partly responsible for the drubbing the party received instrumental had resulted in the before Delhi assembly elections last December. The Congress won just eight of the 70 seats in the state. “We have been in dialogue with Congress leaders for more than two years now and they only make promises which they don’t keep. Sonia Gandhi had directed them to resolve the issue but till date nothing has happened,” says Maulana Jawad.