Muzaffarnagar
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Muzaffarnagar Town
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Head-quarters of the District and tahsil of the same name, United Provinces, situated in 29° 28' N. and 77° 41' E., on the main road from Meerut to Roorkee and Hard war, and on the North- Western Railway. The population is increasing rapidly : (1872) 10,793, (1881) 15,080, (1891) 18,166, and (1901) 23,444. In 1901 Hindus numbered 12,847 arid Musalmans 9,519. The town was founded by the son of Muzaffar Khan, Khan-i-Jahan, in the reign of Shah Jahan, about 1633, close to the site of an older town known as Sarwart. It remained a place of little importance, until in 1824 it became the head-quarters of a sub-collectorship of Saharanpur District, and two years later Muzaffarnagar District was formed. It is a closely- built town, crowded with small streets, but is well situated on high land above the Kali Nadf, to which the drainage is carried. Besides" the ordinary offices, there are a towTi hall, high and middle schools, and male and female hospitals.
There are no resident officials besides those of the ordinary District staff". The American Presbyterian and Reformed Methodist Missions have branches here. Muzaffarnagar was constituted a municipality in 1872. The income and expenditure during the ten years ending 1901 averaged Rs. 22,000. In 1903-4 the income was Rs. 35,000, chiefly derived from octroi (Rs. 21,000) and house tax (Rs. 6,000) ; and the expenditure was Rs. 46,000, A drainage and paving project was completed in 1903 at a cost of more than Rs. 30,000, and the town is now very well drained. The place owes its prosperity largely to the export trade in wheat and sugar, and the only considerable manufacture is that of blankets. Every year in March a horse show is held here. The high school contains 230 pupils, the tahsill school 160, and a girls' school 35.
Claims of the Khan family
The Times of India, Jul 17 2015
Pankul Sharma & Sandeep Rai
If the descendants of Pakistan's first PM Liaquat Ali Khan win this battle, half of UP's Muzaffarnagar will be theirs, including the railway station, DM's residence and a host of other landmarks. It's a fight that has gripped the imagination of this bus tling western UP town.The property dispute relates to ownership of Rs 674-crore worth of real estate in Muzaffarnagar, which allegedly belonged to Liaquat Ali and his kin. The district administration has dug up all old records to rubbish the claim.
It was in 2003 that four lo cals, said to be distant relatives of Liaquat Ali, prepared a deed declaring themselves his descendants. They then quietly approached the UP Revenue Commis sion to get possession of 106 plots owned by the Khan family, which roughly covered 50% of Muzaffarnagar. When the Muzaffarnagar DM finally received a direction two weeks ago to look into the matter, the acquisition was quickly labelled a “fraud“. An FIR was lodged on Thursday. An inquiry to be headed by the ADM (finance) has also been set up. Liaquat Ali Khan had served as a member of the provincial legislative council from Muzaffarnagar between 1926 and 1940. According to his four “relatives“, Liaquat's family had huge properties in the district and after his migration to Pakistan, his cousin Umar Daraz Ali got the possession of all of it. Subsequently, it was transferred to Daraz Ali's son Ajaz Ali. The four claim to be Ajaz's progeny .
Local tehsildar Rajnikant told TOI, “The four accused-Jamshed Ali, Khurshed Ali, Mumtaz Begum and Imtiaz Begum -had made the deed documents on February 26, 2003.After a couple of years, the documents were sent to the revenue board in Lucknow and they demanded possession of the properties.“ The board then asked the district administration about the actual position of these plots and buildings.
The administration found that the land being claimed now housed a number of government buildings, including the DM's bungalow and the railway station. Muzaffarnagar DM Nikhil Chandra Shukla said, “This is a case of total fraud. We have checked our records and all the buildings stand on government land.“
However, the DM added, “Even if their claim is true, where is the original title deed? Where are the documents of transfer from Ajaz Ali to them? It is such a big property and no stamp duty has ever been paid on its transfer? This is nothing but a sheer lie.“
One of the accused, who requested anonymity , insisted the family has the records to prove ownership. “The administration is playing a dirty game,“ he said. “Jamshed Ali, Khurshed Ali, Mumtaz Begum and Imtiaz Begum are the rightful owners of the property being the direct descendants of Umar Daraz Ali Khan.We have records to prove it.“
In a similar lawsuit, and perhaps the biggest property dispute in independent India, the Supreme Court in 2005 had established the ownership of Mohammed Amir Mohammed Khan, the erstwhile raja of Mehmoodabad, on properties worth at least Rs 3,000 crore in Sitapur and Lucknow which were under state government's control.
Laddhewala temple
About a kilometre into the road that leads to Laddhewala in Muzaffarnagar city, a dirty signpost welcomes visitors to this small, nondescript locality. The lanes soon start getting narrower, about 4-foot-wide, between rows of concrete houses. In one sleepy corner of an alleyway, cramped between two buildings, is a solitary temple left behind by its Hindu households sometime in the early 1990s, post the Babri Masjid demolition. Twenty six years later, this shrine is still maintained by its Muslim neighbours, who clean it daily, whitewash it every Diwali and protect it from squatters and stray animals.
There are around 35 Muslim families living in the locality and many of them, like Ali, are hopeful of the return of their Hindu neighbours. Locals said that around 20 Hindu families were living here at that time and the temple was built sometime around 1970.
“The shrine is regularly cleaned and its walls periodically painted. We want them to come back and take control of it,” said Zaheer Ahmad, another local. Nadeem Khan, a former local municipal ward member, said, “Locals pool in money ahead of Diwali every year to get it whitewashed. They make it a point to keep it clean every day.”
The temple, however, does not have an idol. “There used to be one before 1992. When the families left, they took away the idol with them too,” added Ahmad, who lives next to the shrine.
