Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath administration has found out that at least 40 unapproved madarsas had been set up on government land in Uttar Pradesh in the past few years and decided to close them after rechecking.

The government will probe how the madarsas, allegedly set up without the approval of the minority affairs department, got the gram sabha plots, which are allotted to poor and landless families for agricultural activities.

Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary, the minority affairs minister, told The Telegraph the department had constituted a three-member committee to recheck the documents of the madarsas before they are blacklisted and any further action is initiated.

"We need to inquire properly how such land was allotted to the madarsas and how construction work was allowed," Chaudhary said.

"The 40 madarsas are among the 79 such institutions that have been running without approval from the minority affairs department," the minister added.

The 40 madarsas were set up between 2012 and early 2017, when the Samajwadi Party was in power.

But the owner of one of the madarsas in Saharanpur said he had provided all documents to an inquiry team.

"I had requested the government in 2013 to allot land for my institution. The land was given in 2014. I have been running the madarsa since 2015. The present government's officials asked me how I got a gram sabha plot. But the problem is I don't know why the previous government allotted me this particular plot. It is not my fault," he said on condition of anonymity.

Spot verification of aided minority institutions has been going on since October 2017, when the BJP government asked all madarsa owners to upload details on the website of the minority affairs department. Responding to this, 16,461 madarsas uploaded the details till December 31, 2017, but 1,560 didn't.