The Delhi High Court has once again drawn a firm line against what it described as an attempt to “rake up the past,” dismissing a public interest litigation that sought to unsettle a 1980 notification declaring three Jahangirpuri mosques as waqf properties.
The petition, filed by Save India Foundation, targeted a decades-old notification issued by the Delhi Waqf Board under the Muslim Waqfs Act, 1954. The listing included Jama Masjid Jahangir Puri, Moti Masjid and Masjid Jahangir Puri in the capital’s Jahangirpuri area.
A Bench led by Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia was unsparing in its assessment. The Court found that the plea was neither bona fide nor in public interest. It questioned the motive behind reviving a challenge to a notification issued nearly 46 years ago, observing that such stale claims cannot be entertained on “flimsy grounds.”
The judges also took note of the petitioner’s litigation history. Between 2024 and 2026 alone, the organisation had filed 37 PILs and 11 writ petitions—many directed at mosques and dargahs. The Court cautioned that public interest litigation, once conceived as a constitutional tool to protect the vulnerable, must not be allowed to be diluted by repetitive or agenda-driven filings. The “purity of the stream” of PILs, it stressed, cannot be compromised.
At the heart of the dispute was land in Jahangirpuri that had been acquired by the government in 1977 for planned development of Delhi. The petitioner argued that compensation had been paid to landowners under the Land Acquisition Act and that the mosques standing on the land were illegal encroachments, making their inclusion in the waqf list unlawful.
The Waqf Board countered that the 1980 notification followed due inquiry by the Commissioner of Waqfs under Sections 4 and 5 of the 1954 Act. Crucially, it pointed to Section 6 of the statute, which provides a one-year window to challenge the inclusion of properties in the waqf list before a civil court.
The High Court agreed. Once the statutory clock had long run out, it held, reopening the matter was legally impermissible. A notification issued after due process in 1980 cannot be unsettled nearly half a century later, particularly when the law itself bars belated challenges.
With that, the PIL was dismissed—another emphatic reminder that public interest litigation is not a time machine.
