Waqf Pe Kiya, Kya Haseen Sitam

The petitions challenging the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, could remain in cold storage while the evil inherent in the statute plays itself out

- By Saiyyad Mohammad Nizamuddin Pasha IS A DELHI-BASED LAWYER

THE recent interim order of the Supreme Court in the writ petitions challenging the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, produced widely varying and quickly fluctuating responses, with the mood in the petitioners' camp swinging from jubilant to despondent within a span of a few hours. The tragic-comic scenes that resulted only go on to show how scant the understanding is of the waqf law in general.

To begin with, the arguments in court were themselves limited by two administrative decisions of the court. Out of around 80 petitions filed, the court chose to limit itself to five, and directed the rest to be treated as Intervention Applications (IAs)—applications requesting to be heard in those five cases. The counsels in these IAs were eventually not heard, except one. Of the five petitions shortlisted, the court heard the counsel in only four. As a result, the hearing became severely limited to what the counsels who were given an audience chose to argue. While this may have been an administrative requirement in the interest of time management, the extent of curtailment was severe, especially given the importance of the case to Indian Muslims.