When a home is ‘enemy property’

Faisal Azim Abbasi and others face uncertainty as government auctions 'enemy properties' across India, impacting generations of occupants.

Faisal Azim Abbasi, 48, is worried for himself and his joint family of eight. He has been getting notices to sign an 11-month license agreement with the Custodian of Enemy Property for India (CEPI), a department under the Ministry of Home Affairs, formed after the Indo-Pak war of 1965 and the two Indo-China wars in 1962 and 1967.

Abbasi has known no other home other than the single-storey, 800-square-foot space in Lucknow’s Maulviganj. The house, popularly known as Zareef Manzil or Lal Kothi, has been inhabited by his family for four generations.

“My grandfather took the property on rent from the Raja of Mahmudabad in the late 1930s,” says Abbasi. They paid ₹16 and 8 annas (50 paise). In 1957, the erstwhile raja moved to Pakistan and took citizenship there.

Abbasi is among hundreds of residents across India who occupy ‘Enemy Properties’, declared thus after the Enemy Property Act, 1968, came into being. The Act enabled the state to regulate and appropriate real estate belonging to those who had left India and got citizenship of countries it has gone to war with: Pakistan and China.

Now, the Union government has begun to e-auction many of the 12,611 properties across the country, out of which 126 belong to Chinese citizens. Uttar Pradesh has the maximum number, at 6,041, followed by West Bengal at 4,354. Lucknow itself has 361 such properties, with 105 occupied, the highest in U.P. and all in disrepair. Shamli district has 482, Sitapur 378, Muzaffarnagar has 274, and Budaun 250, besides the others.

These ‘enemy properties’ could be “any property that belongs to, is held or managed on behalf of an enemy, an enemy subject, or an enemy firm”. The word “enemy” signifies any country that has committed an act of aggression or declared war against the Union of India, and “property” is immovable assets and all negotiable instruments such as shares, debentures, and other commerce.

Abbasi’s grandfather, Matloob Alam, signed the original lease and the family was told on September 24, 1966, via a letter from the then Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDO), Lucknow, S.S. Nigam that the building they lived in had become ‘enemy property’, and was owned by the state. “I, SDO Lucknow hereby direct Shri Matloob Alam, the occupant of the property, to pay monthly rent, dues etc. to Tehsildar Lucknow with immediate effect,” the letter had said.