PESHAWAR, Feb 13: The NWFP government has suggested to the federal government to give control of mosques to district governments and those of madaris to the provinces, sources in Auqaf department informed Dawn here on Wednesday.

The provincial government has further proposed to the Centre to devise policy for the registration of mosques and madaris to regularise them.

Official sources said the federal ministry for religious affairs had recently sought comments on the registration of mosques and madaris from the four provinces in order to evolve a registration policy.

President Gen Musharraf, in his address on Jan 12, had declared that all mosques and madaris would have to be registered by March 23, 2002, and that they could not function without obtaining an NOC.

The Frontier province has over 900 registered madaris with more than 150,000 students. According to official sources, over 1,800 unregistered madaris are functioning in the province, while the number of mosques are unknown.

Since 1988, madaris have been established without being registered which led to their mushroom growth in the country. Curiously, the Industry Department has been tasked to register madaris, which apparently has no business with the seminaries.

The sources said the NWFP government was anxiously waiting for the new registration policy. The Centre was to deliver the registration policy to the provinces before January. The NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah had personally approached the chief executive secretariat to send guidelines about the registration of madaris and mosques, it is learnt.

The sources said the federal government was likely to authorise the Auqaf Department to register seminaries and mosques. “It will be a little bit difficult for the Auqaf Department to manage the affairs of a large number of mosques in the province,” an official said, adding that was why the province requested the federal government to hand over the mosques’ registration to the district governments.

An official said that people were approaching the Auqaf Department for the registration of madaris, but the department concerned had no legal powers to allow construction of mosques and seminaries.