Privacy Policy — Andhra Pradesh State Waqf Board

What this policy covers

This policy covers two things the Board operates:

This website — apwaqfboard.com: Public information about the Board, its institutions, properties and services. Most of it can be read without giving any information about yourself.
The DCB application — dcb.apwaqfboard.com: The Board’s own record system for institutions, properties, demand, collection and balance. It is used by officers of the Board, by Mutawallis and committee members, and by holders of Waqf property who pay rent, lease or licence. Access requires an account issued by the Board.

It does not cover any other website this one links to. Taleem-e-Hunar, the Government of Andhra Pradesh portals and the map service embedded on the Contact page are operated by others under their own policies, and following a link takes you outside this Board’s control.

What is collected

When you only read this website

Nothing is asked of you. The web server records the ordinary technical particulars every web server records — the address the request came from, the page asked for, the date and time, and the browser identification string — which are used to keep the site running and to investigate misuse. No advertising or analytics service is embedded in these pages, and no cookie is set to track you.

When you send an enquiry

The Help Desk form asks for your name, mobile number, email address and the substance of the enquiry. All four are used to register the enquiry, to act on it, and to reply. An enquiry that cannot be replied to is of limited use to you and to the office.

When you use the DCB application

The application holds the Board’s statutory record, and that record is by its nature about identified people:

Name, designation, mobile number and email address of the account holder, and the district and institution the account is attached to.
Particulars of Mutawallis and managing committee members — name, address, photograph, and identity documents including Aadhaar where the record requires it.
Particulars of holders of Waqf property — name, address, contact number, and the agreement, lease or licence relied on.
Institution and property records, income assessments, demand raised, receipts issued, and the balance carried.
Inspection reports, photographs of property and of persons where the record requires them, and documents uploaded in support of an entry.
A log of who signed in, from what device, what they looked at and what they changed. This log is not optional: a register that records public property has to be able to say who altered it.

When you pay the Board online

Payment is taken by a bank-operated payment gateway. Card numbers, UPI credentials, net banking passwords and one-time passwords are entered on the gateway’s own pages and are never seen, transmitted or stored by this Board or by its application. What comes back to the Board and is stored is the transaction reference, the amount, the date and time, the outcome, and the institution and property the payment is credited to — that is, the contents of the receipt.

Aadhaar and identity documents

Where an Aadhaar number is recorded as proof of identity for a Mutawalli, a committee member or a holder, it is stored encrypted and is not displayed in full anywhere in the application. Officers see only the last four digits — enough to confirm that the document on the file is the document on the record, and not enough to reproduce the number.

Aadhaar is used to establish that a named person is who the record says they are. It is not used to authenticate sign-in, is not shared for any other purpose, and is not disclosed in any published figure, report or export.

The Board does not ask for an Aadhaar number by telephone, message or email. Treat any such request as fraudulent.

How the information is used, and who it is shared with

Information is used for the purpose it was given for and for the Board’s statutory functions under the Waqf Act, 1995 — maintaining the register, raising and collecting demand, issuing receipts, inspecting property, deciding applications, and answering grievances.

It is disclosed only

to officers of the Board, to the extent their role requires. The application enforces this: a district officer does not see another district’s records, and a Mutawalli sees the institution they manage and no other.
to the Minorities Welfare Department and the Central Waqf Council, in the returns and reports the Board is required to submit.
to the bank operating the payment gateway, limited to what is needed to take and reconcile a payment.
to an auditor appointed to audit the Board’s accounts.
where a court, tribunal or law requires it.

Personal information held by the Board is not sold, rented, or given to anyone for advertising, marketing or any commercial purpose. There is no arrangement of that kind and none is contemplated.

Published figures — register statistics, the demand-collection-balance summary, inspection coverage — are aggregates. They do not name a person.

How long it is kept, and how it is protected

Retention

The register and the financial record are permanent. An institution’s entry, the demand raised against it and the receipts issued to it are the Board’s account of public property, and they are not deleted when a person’s association with the institution ends — the historical entry has to survive for the account of earlier years to make sense. Sign-in and access logs are kept for as long as they are useful for audit. Enquiries are kept until the matter is closed, and afterwards for the period the Board’s records policy requires.

Protection

The site and the application are served only over HTTPS.
Sign-in requires a password, or a one-time password to a registered mobile number, and every session can be revoked by the Board.
An idle session is closed rather than merely refused.
Aadhaar numbers are held encrypted, under a key held separately from the database.
What each account can see and do is fixed by its role, and every change to a record is logged against the account that made it.
Backups are taken, and are held under the same restrictions as the live record.

No system is beyond compromise, and the Board does not claim otherwise. What it commits to is that a compromise affecting personal information will be investigated, contained, and reported to those affected and to the authorities the law requires.

Seeing and correcting what is held about you

You may ask the Board what it holds about you, and ask for an error to be corrected. Apply in writing to the Head Office, identifying yourself, the institution or property the record relates to, what is recorded, and what it should read. A correction is made against evidence, so enclose the document that establishes it.

Two limits are worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to discover them. A record forming part of the statutory register or the financial account cannot simply be deleted on request — it can be corrected, and the correction is itself recorded. And where a record concerns a dispute between parties, it is dealt with in that proceeding, and not by amendment on one side’s application.

Contact

Questions about this policy, requests to see or correct a record, and complaints about the handling of personal information go to the Head Office:

Andhra Pradesh State Waqf Board
4th Floor, Imdad Ghar
Opposite Kaleswara Rao Market
Vijayawada – 520001, Andhra Pradesh
Telephone: 0866 242 4286
Office hours: 10:00 AM – 5:30 PM, working days

A grievance about this website or the application may also be raised through the Help Desk. A grievance about a payment goes to the Head Office in writing, quoting the transaction reference.

Changes to this policy

This policy may be revised. The date in force appears at the top of the page, and a revision takes effect from the date shown there. Material changes will be announced on the home page.