Congress Lok Sabha member Imran Masood, who was also a member of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf Bill, has moved the Supreme Court with a petition challenging the Waqf Act.
The petition, filed by Supreme Court lawyer Shariq Ahmed, said that the amendment to the Waqf Act “strikes at the heart of India’s constitutional promise: that every community shall govern its faith, its institutions, and its property without fear of arbitrary state interference”.
The Waqf Act, it said, is a “form of dismantling of the Waqf law and architecture” and that it “seeks to erode the legal character of Waqf through executive fiat”.
“It replaces independence with discretion of the collector and protection with pre- emption. In doing so, it subverts the fundamental guarantees under Articles 14, 21, 25, and 26, and violates the federal scheme by arrogating to the Centre control over what the Constitution leaves to the States and to religious denominations themselves,” said the petition of the Congress MP from Saharanpur.
It added that the Act is “in form and effect, a repudiation of India’s pluralist framework”.
A three-judge Bench presided by CJI Sanjiv Khanna, and comprising Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan, is scheduled to hear the petitions challenging the Waqf law on April 16.
Several petitions have been filed before the apex court challenging the constitutional validity of Waqf Act, including by AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan, RJD MP Manoj Jha, Samastha Kerala Jemiyyathul Ulama, and the Association for Protection of Civil Rights.
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The Centre had earlier approached the top court with a caveat, which is a request to hear it before passing any order on the pending batch of writ petitions challenging the Act.
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