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Controversial religious trusts act repealed in UP

The Bhartiya Janata Party-led Uttar Pradesh coalition government gave in to pressure from the strong Vishwa Hindu Parishad lobby and scrapped the UP Hindu Public Religious Trust (Prevention of Misuse of Property) Act, 1962, Tuesday, which empowered the state administration to inquire into any of misuse of religious trusts.

The act also made it mandatory for all religious trust to seek permission of the divisional commissioner for any transfer of property.

The main opposition to the act came from the sadhus of Haridwar, who even threatened to "topple" the government on the issue. VHP supremo Ashok Singhal, grabbed the opportunity to hijack the issue by persuading Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta to fly down to Haridwar to pacify them.

The act that was initially enforced only for two years with effect from December 15, 1962, was periodically extended over the decades. There were occasional demands to scrap it.

Former chief ministers Kalyan Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav actively considered it in 1991-92 and 1994-94 respectively, but eventually decided against it.

This time, however, the VHP lobby managed to impress upon the chief minister that the act was superfluous, as the provisions of the Charitable and Religious Trust Act, 1920 and those of Section 92 of the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) were sufficient to keep the desired checks. The older law empowers the district judge to assume control over the functioning of religious trusts if required, they argued.

The scrapped law covered a wide range of religious trusts or endowments and was applicable to all institutions whose gross annual income was above Rs 1,200 or value of the property was more than Rs 50,000.

Both the BJP allies, the Loktantrik Congress Party and the Jantantrik Bahujan Samaj Party welcomed the decision.

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