Telangana Waqf Board warns against fake NOCs used to grab land

The Telangana Waqf Board has flagged a surge in forged No Objection Certificates (NOCs) and occupancy rights certificates being used to illegally register Waqf properties, secure planning approvals and remove lands from the prohibited list.

According to reports, land grabbers are producing fabricated documents in the Waqf Board’s name to register properties, obtain clearances from agencies such as the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) and Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), and get certain entries deleted from the Section 22-A prohibited properties list.

In one case, a purported NOC dated December 2025 claimed the Board’s CEO had told the Yadadri Bhuvanagiri collector that the Board had no claim over 54 acres in Survey Nos 233 and 316 in Atmakur mandal; Waqf officials say the document is fake. In another instance, a forged NOC from May 2022 was used in connection with Survey No 463 in Maheshwaram village, Rangareddy district, asserting that no gazette notification or survey commissioner’s report existed for the land, even as the Board holds nearly 560 acres in Maheshwaram mandal, now valued at thousands of crores.

Telangana Waqf Board CEO Mohammed Asadullah said the Board does not issue any NOC, clearance certificate, memo or letter stating that a particular property is not Waqf land. “Neither the Waqf Act, 1995, nor the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025, provides any provision for the issuance of such NOCs,” he said, adding that any document claiming to be an NOC from the Telangana Waqf Board must be treated as void and should not be relied upon for registration, revenue or other official purposes.

Asadullah warned that the Board would not be responsible for transactions carried out on the basis of forged NOCs or clearance certificates, and said departments receiving such papers should refer them to the Board for verification instead of acting on them.