Centre has data on Waqf land, but none on Catholic church, then what's the din all about?

RSS mouthpiece Organiser's article on the land owned by the Catholic church in India has stirred a debate. While it cannot be accessed on the website anymore, the figures cited by the magazine evoke interest. It said the church owns 7 crore hectares of land (7 lakh sq km) worth ₹20,000 crore. Going by this figure, the Catholic church owns 21 per cent of the total area of the country. India covers an area of 32.87 lakh sq km. 

The figures pertaining to church assets and properties have been quoted earlier in numerous reports, along with the details of the land owned by the public sector enterprises in the country. The information was then attributed to the Government land information website. However, none of these articles published earlier has attributed the data regarding Catholic church properties to the land information website. Even with the same count of assets and measure of land, the value was even fixed at ₹50,000 crore. 

Curiously, if the information regarding total Catholic church properties was sourced from a portal under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and maintained by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the centre has told the parliament that it doesn't have any such data. In November 2024, Mohammed Nadimul Haque, Trinamool Cobgress MP from West Bengal, asked whether the Government has data regarding the total land holdings and properties owned or administered by the Catholic Church across the country, and whether any studies or assessments have been conducted to evaluate the management and usage of Catholic Church land holdings. 

Minister of Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju in his reply stated that the subject ‘Land’ and its management falls within the jurisdiction of the States. All details of land records and related registration data/ownership data including holding by Catholic Church are available with the respective States/UTs, the Minister said. 

The Government, however, furnished data on all waqf properties by sourcing data from the WAMSI (Waqf Assets Management System of India) portal, which is entered by the respective State Waqf Boards (SWB). The portal shows that there are 8,72,352 immovable and 16,713 movable waqf properties in the country. The highest number of immovable properties has been recorded in Uttar Pradesh, with Shias holding 15,386 and Sunnis having 2,17,161 properties. In December 2024, this information was furnished to the parliament. 

According to the centre, it has information on waqf properties, and any data on church properties needs to be sourced from the respective states. In Kerala, land data is maintained through the Revenue Land Information System. The officials with the Revenue Department Onmanorama spoke to said that compiled data of total properties owned by an individual or an institution is garnered by providing specific details. While the task is cumbersome even in the case of individuals, calculating the total extent of properties owned by a church or any other religious institution could be a taxing process, the officials said. 

The Organiser ran the article ‘Who has more land in India—The Catholic Church vs Waqf board debate’. The article relied on figures dating back to 2021, which have been repeated often to pitch the Catholic Church as the second biggest landowner in the country. These figures are supposed to have been sourced from GLIS, which now offers restricted access.