5 months ago
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The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court has intervened successful a long-running quality implicit the validity of trustee elections for the Choti Masjid Trust in Buldhana district, aft rival factions clashed implicit the mentation of its governing strategy framed successful 1989.
The controversy arose erstwhile the Waqf Tribunal invalidated the 2019 predetermination of trustees and acceptable speech the Maharashtra State Waqf Board’s support of their alteration report, prompting the elected trustees to question alleviation from the High Court.
Justice Shailesh P. Brahme, disposed of a December 11, 2023, exertion and directed that caller elections beryllium completed wrong 2 months nether clarified norms.
The applicants, Abdul Rahman Abdul Razzaque and others, were elected connected February 25, 2019, for a five-year term. Their alteration study was approved by the Waqf Board connected September 1, 2021. However, the Choti Masjid Trust challenged this approval, alleging irregularities specified arsenic a defective voters’ database and the assignment of an Election Officer without jurisdiction.
Acting connected this challenge, the Waqf Tribunal connected June 16, 2023, rejected the applicants’ plea and allowed the trust’s application, efficaciously nullifying the 2019 election. The applicants past approached the High Court seeking mentation of ambiguous clauses successful the strategy and designation of their tenure.
Advocate Ameet R. Vaidya, for the applicants, argued, “The Tribunal overlooked the solution dated December 22, 1989, and successful presumption of clause 27 of the scheme, the solution has a binding unit successful the lack of immoderate rules oregon regulations to modulate the elections. The Tribunal should person upheld the predetermination of the applicants.”
He described clauses 8(C) and 8(D) arsenic “autocratic successful nature” and urged the Court to construe them “so that they would go enforceable and practicable,” adding that the Waqf Board would instrumentality clip to modify the scheme.
Advocate S. S. Kazi, representing the Choti Masjid Trust, countered, “It is the relation of the Board to formulate the scheme, and the Tribunal could not person assumed specified powers. Respondent No. 2—the Board—approved the alteration study of the applicants done a non-speaking order, which is perverse.”
He supported the Tribunal’s bid and sought directions for the Board to determine pending applications for amendment to the scheme. Advocate N. E. Deshmukh, for responsive nos. 2 and 3, besides termed clauses 8(C) and 8(D) “ambiguous and autocratic” and referred to Section 69 of the Waqf Act, 1995.
The Judge observed that the strategy framed connected July 10, 1989, lacked predetermination rules, leaving everything to clauses that were “ambiguous.” He noted, “The purport of the Scheme is wide arsenic to the qualifying property of the voters. It is not the lawsuit that the voters aged 21 and supra are not available. Any different mentation oregon the norms stipulating qualified property arsenic 18 years is not imaginable to beryllium countenanced.”
The Court clarified that the word “trustee” successful clause 8(C) should beryllium work to see members oregon voters of the trust and defined the qualifying spot of residence arsenic Peth Ahmedpur village and its surrounding vicinity, including Amboda Naka and adjacent landmarks.
The Judge emphasized that these clarifications would service arsenic a stopgap statement until the Waqf Board frames or modifies the strategy under Section 69 of the Waqf Act. He directed that the predetermination process beryllium completed wrong 2 months, pursuing the existing strategy and the Court’s interpretation, notwithstanding any pending applications for modification. He further stated that the Waqf Board indispensable determine immoderate applications for amendment oregon modification of the strategy “on its ain merits.”
“The mentation or clarification in the foregoing paragraphs would facilitate a free and transparent predetermination without immoderate confusion. Till the responsive no.2 — Board formulates a new Scheme or modifies the earlier Scheme, the supra Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) shall modulate the elections,” the Court noted and disposed of the matter.
