NEW DELHI: Supreme Court will decide on Monday whether and what interim order could be passed on petitions challenging the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025, on the ground that its provisions interfered with the traditional and historic link of waqfs with Islam and violated Article 26 which guarantees freedom of religious affairs.
A three-judge bench headed by CJI Sanjiv Khanna, who is scheduled to retire on May 13, has limited time to take up final hearing of the matter as it would require hearing many lawyers from the petitioners’ side and the Union govt, which as an interim response to the petitions has filed an over 1,300-page affidavit.
The court had picked five lead petitions from the over 150 and named them as ‘In Re: The Waqf Amendment Act’ to restrict the number of advocates who could argue for the petitioners. Even then, the hearing on the necessity of interim order could be time consuming as every counsel on the petitioners side has so far promised to make a new point and sought an opportunity to argue.
Government: Waqf law rivals spreading falsehood
Defending the Act as a secular law, the Centre on Friday accused the petitioners of spinning a false “interference in religious affairs” narrative on mandatory registration of every waqf, including ‘waqf by user’, and said this provision was more than a century old. Ministry of minority affairs in a 1,332-page affidavit has requested the SC to fall back on the traditional assumption of validity of the law enacted by Parliament and conduct a detailed hearing without granting any stay on operation of the law which is to stop misuse of the 2013 amendment which the govt says allowed encroachment of private and govt properties.
The ministry requested the SC, which had flagged three issues in the 2025 law – registration documents of waqf properties, inclusion of non-Muslims in Waqf Council and Waqf Boards and determination of govt land – for an equitable approach by arguing that though challenge to the validity of Waqf Act, 1995, was pending for a long time, the court had never contemplated staying certain provisions of the 30-year-old law.
“Till 2013, the total area under waqf was 18.3 lakh acres. It is really shocking to note that after 2013, another 20.9 lakh acres of land were added to waqfs, which totalled 39.2 lakh acres,” the ministry had said.
