The Maharashtra government has ordered a time-bound, statewide audit of land parcels owned by churches, Christian missionary organisations and related institutions. Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule announced the decision in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, July 8, saying the exercise would be completed within three months and that action would be taken wherever violations are found.
“The objective is to identify illegal encroachments, disputed land titles and irregularities in ownership,” Bawankule told the House, adding that the exercise forms part of the government’s wider push to bring order to land records across the state.
The minister clarified that institutions holding valid documents have nothing to worry about. “Those with legally valid land titles and transfers need not worry. But where there are violations of norms or illegalities, the government will review the cases and take appropriate action,” he said.
Bawankule said the review would stretch back to land acquired by missionary organisations during British rule and extend to properties transferred after Independence, to check whether any laws were breached along the way. Verification will be handled by a committee under each divisional commissioner, with representation from the Settlement Commissioner’s office, the police and the Inspector General of Registration.
Where land has already turned into residential colonies or been used for public infrastructure, the minister said, the government would first take legal opinion before deciding how to proceed.
Nashik Land Fraud Triggered the Decision
The announcement followed a calling attention motion raised by BJP MLA Devayani Pharande over a long-pending land dispute involving the Nashik Diocesan Trust Association Limited (NDTA). Pharande’s grievance centred on land the British government had once set aside for Christian-run schools, colleges and hospitals; she claimed that after the original trustees passed away, records were tampered with to move this land into private hands.
The case that appears to have prompted the wider audit involves an alleged Rs 300 crore fraud in Nashik, where police claim around six acres of church land legally belonging to the NDTA was leased out and sold over several decades using forged ownership documents. The FIR names another body, the Nashik Diocesan Council (NDC), accusing it of posing as the rightful owner and using fabricated paperwork to push the deals through.
Notably, the Nashik police themselves figure among the alleged victims. Part of the land had been under police occupation on lease since 1990, and even though the commissionerate’s office relocated in 2014, some of the property still houses police offices today. Investigators say rent was paid out for years under agreements signed by people who had no legal claim to the land in the first place, a discrepancy that eventually pulled the police into registering the case themselves.
Background of Rising Tension
The audit announcement came a week after a delegation of Christian groups met the Mumbai Police Commissioner seeking protection against alleged intimidation by right-wing groups at prayer meetings. Roughly 25 organisations, under the collective name Mumbai for Peace, submitted a memorandum claiming that outsiders had repeatedly disrupted prayer gatherings and circulated false information about the community.
In February this year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had urged the US government to press Indian officials to hold perpetrators of targeted violence accountable, describing what it called “violent attacks by Hindu nationalist mobs targeting Christians,” and had called for India to be designated a Country of Particular Concern. In March, the Maharashtra government had passed the Freedom of Religion Bill, an anti-conversion law opposed by Christian groups and opposition parties.
