A balanced verdict: Supreme Court’s measured stand on the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025

Given the sensitivity of the issue, the judgment rendered by the Supreme Court of India on the Waqf Amendment Act, 2025, was rational and balanced. A waqf, being a charitable donation made by Muslims for the community, can be used only for purposes that bring about common benefits. These properties have traditionally been governed by the Waqf Act, 1995, which mandated the formation of State-level waqf boards to manage them, with a Central Waqf Council as the monitor.

The current NDA government, offering the argument that the actions of these boards required greater transparency, amended the Act to bring some changes to how a waqf property was determined and managed, resulting in nationwide protests from Muslims, inducing their representatives, as also the Indian Opposition, to challenge the Amendment Act in the Supreme Court.

It may be noted that ownership of many of the properties by the waqf boards have been through continuous use by the Muslim community. But, the amendment mandates that waqf boards require valid documents to claim a property as waqf, with the final decision, in case of disputes, lying with the government.

The apex court has struck down this amendment, stating that allowing the government to determine the rights of a citizen would go against the separation of powers between the executive and judiciary, as laid down under the Constitution.

However, the two-judge bench of the apex court re-fused to stay the Act in its entirety, arguing that striking down a statute is reserved for the rarest of cases, since the presumption is always in favour of the constitutionality of a statute, and the contending parties have failed to make a prima facie case against the amendments as a whole.

It justified such a ruling also by noting that, during the presentation of arguments, the petitioners' challenge was centred primarily on specific provisions of the Amendment Act. Thus, the bench came to the conclusion that while the Act could not be stayed in its totality, some of the provisions had to be stayed since they would lead to "arbitrary" exercise of power and "need some protection."

These provisions, therefore, were ruled to be paused till the petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Act were decided. One such change required the waqifs (per-sons creating the waqf) to prove they have been practising Islam for five years, a provision the bench deemed unsustainable as it could lead to the arbitrary exercise of power without a mechanism to determine who was a practising Muslim.

While the judges refused to stay a provision that allows the nomination of non-Muslims to the waqf board, they limited the number of non-Muslim members to four in the 22-member Central Waqf Council, and to three in the 11-member State boards.