The Supreme Court has drawn a firm boundary around the powers of Waqf Tribunals, holding that they cannot hear disputes over properties that are neither listed in the official “list of auqaf” nor registered under the Waqf Act.
A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. Vinod Chandran overturned a Telangana High Court ruling that had upheld an injunction granted by a Waqf Tribunal over a property that was never registered as waqf under the statute.
At the heart of the decision was a simple statutory test: jurisdiction follows notification or registration. The Court noted that a plain reading of the pleadings showed the disputed property did not appear in the list of auqaf published under Chapter II of the Act, nor was it registered under Chapter V. Without satisfying either requirement, the Tribunal had no authority to decide whether the property qualified as waqf.
The judgment settles a long-running judicial split on how broadly the Tribunal’s powers extend. Earlier rulings such as Anis Fatma Begum v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Rashid Wali Beg v. Farid Pindari had taken an expansive view, suggesting that Tribunals could decide any dispute linked to waqf property, even if the property was not formally listed.
The present ruling steers the law back to the narrower interpretation laid down in Ramesh Gobindram v. Sugra Humayun Mirza Wakf. That decision treated Section 83 of the Waqf Act as a provision enabling the creation of Tribunals, not as a blanket grant of authority over every alleged waqf-related dispute.
Justice Chandran, writing for the bench, observed that earlier decisions had selectively relied on the phrase “any dispute, question or other matter relating to a waqf or waqf property” while overlooking the crucial qualifier “under this Act.” According to the Court, waqf status under the Act can arise only through inclusion in the list of auqaf after a statutory survey, or through formal registration. Without that legal footing, Tribunal jurisdiction simply does not arise.
How the dispute arose
The case stemmed from a suit seeking a permanent injunction before a Waqf Tribunal. The claimant argued that a room in a residential complex had, through prolonged religious use, effectively become a mosque and thus waqf property. It was undisputed that the property had never been notified in the statutory list nor registered under the Act.
Despite this, the Tribunal entertained the claim and granted relief, a decision later affirmed by the High Court. The appellants challenged these orders before the Supreme Court, arguing that the Tribunal lacked even the threshold authority to examine the claim.
The Court agreed, holding that the plaint itself was defective for want of jurisdiction. As a result, the appeal was allowed, the Tribunal and High Court orders were set aside, and the suit was rejected at the outset under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
