NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that there is no absolute and all-pervasive ouster of the jurisdiction of civil courts even under Section 85 of the Waqf Act, 1995.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and K Vinod Chandran said, “Section 83 of the Act cannot be considered as a provision conferring jurisdiction on the Tribunal with respect to matters in addition to which jurisdiction has already been conferred under the other provisions of the Act.”
The bench made the observation while setting aside a judgment of the Telangana High Court pertaining to a property unregistered under the Waqf Act.
The top court stated that resolution of disputes over whether a property is a waqf or not is expressly conferred on the Waqf Tribunal only with respect to properties specified in the ‘list of auqaf’.
Referring to Section 9 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, the bench said that even if a statute accords finality to the orders of a Tribunal, courts must examine whether the Tribunal has the power to grant the reliefs that civil courts normally provide. If not, there can be no inference of exclusion of civil court jurisdiction.
Hearing an appeal filed by Habib Alladin and others, the court noted that the property in question was neither specified in the ‘list of auqaf’ published under Chapter II nor registered under Chapter V of the Act.
The bench held that the question of whether the property is a waqf property could not be decided by the Tribunal since it was not included in the ‘list of auqaf’, which is a mandatory requirement under Sections 6(1) and 7(1) of the Waqf Act, 1995, to approach the forum.
“The injunction simpliciter sought before the Tribunal does not fall within its jurisdiction and the plaint has to be rejected,” the bench said.
In its judgment authored by Justice Chandran, the court examined the scope and extent of the jurisdiction of the Tribunal constituted under the Waqf Act, 1995.
The court allowed the appeal and set aside the Tribunal’s judgment on jurisdiction as well as the High Court’s order affirming it, leaving the question of whether the scheduled property is a waqf open to be agitated in accordance with law.