In Re: The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 — The Supreme Court's Interim Order

What was actually before the Court

The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 rewrote significant parts of the Waqf Act, 1995 — the definition of "waqf," the procedure for identifying waqf property that may in fact be government land, the composition of the Central Waqf Council and State Waqf Boards, and the tribunal structure for resolving waqf disputes. Asaduddin Owaisi and a large number of other petitioners filed writ petitions under Article 32 arguing that several provisions violated Articles 14, 25 and 26 of the Constitution and were manifestly arbitrary. The matters were heard together as In Re: The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 along with connected writ petitions and a transfer petition, before a bench of the Chief Justice, B.R. Gavai, and Justice Augustine George Masih.

Crucially, the hearing before this bench was confined to the question of interim relief — whether any part of the Act should be stayed pending the final hearing. The Court did not undertake, and expressly declined to undertake, a final adjudication of the constitutional challenge itself.

The standard the Court applied

The bench began from the settled position that courts must be "very slow" to stay a duly enacted statute, and that interim stay of legislation is warranted only in rare and exceptional cases — where a party shows either a lack of legislative competence, an ex-facie violation of Part III, or manifest arbitrariness. The judgment traces this principle through Charanjit Lal Chowdhury v. Union of India, State of Bombay v. F.N. Balsara, and Ram Krishna Dalmia v. Justice S.R. Tendolkar, each affirming that a legislative enactment carries a presumption of constitutionality and that the burden lies on the party attacking it.

Applying that threshold, the Court held that no case had been made out to stay the Act in its entirety:

Having rejected a blanket stay, the Court went on to examine specific provisions "to protect the interest of all the parties and balance the equities during pendency" of the litigation, and issued targeted interim directions on a handful of them.

The five-year practising-Muslim condition: stayed for want of a mechanism, not struck down as discriminatory

Section 3(r) of the Act, as amended, defines "waqf" to require that the person creating it show he has been "practising Islam for at least five years." Petitioners argued the condition was arbitrary and discriminatory. The Court's reasoning here is easy to mischaracterise, so the distinction matters: the bench did not hold the condition itself to be unconstitutional. It held, prima facie, that a bona fide anti-abuse rationale existed — citing the legislative history of the Mussalman Wakf Act, 1923, which recorded that waqf dedications had at times been used as a "clever device" to shield property from creditors, including through opportunistic conversion.

In the Court's words, the condition "cannot be said to be arbitrary or discriminatory," but "since no mechanism or procedure has been provided as of now for ascertaining as to whether a person has been practicing Islam for at least 5 years or not, such a provision cannot be given effect to immediately." The stay is therefore procedural and time-limited to rule-framing, not a substantive finding of unconstitutionality — and the Court expressly reserved the parties' right to argue the underlying validity question at the final hearing.

Collector-determined title disputes: stayed on separation-of-powers grounds

The second major intervention concerned Section 3C of the amended Act, which addresses waqf properties that are also claimed as government property. The Court let stand the initial step — a "designated officer" conducting an inquiry into disputed status. But it stayed the mechanism that followed: a proviso preventing the property from being treated as waqf property until the officer's report is filed, and the sub-sections empowering the officer, once he determines the property is government land, to have revenue records corrected directly, with the State Government then directing the Waqf Board to fall in line.

The Court's objection was structural rather than result-oriented:

The Court noted that Section 83 of the Amended Act already establishes Waqf Tribunals — three-member bodies chaired by a serving or retired District Judge, with a state officer and a person versed in Muslim law as the other members, subject to appeal to the jurisdictional High Court — as the appropriate forum for title determination. Letting an executive officer make that call, with revenue records amended and Board records corrected as a consequence, was found prima facie arbitrary because it bypassed that judicial mechanism.

Council and Board composition capped; other challenges left untouched

The Court also addressed the composition of the Central Waqf Council and State Waqf Boards, which under the amended Act permit a larger proportion of non-Muslim members than before. Without staying the enabling provisions outright, the bench capped the numbers by interim direction: the Central Waqf Council is not to have more than four non-Muslim members out of twenty-two, and a State Waqf Board is not to have more than three non-Muslim members out of eleven. On the office of Chief Executive Officer of a Board — an ex officio Secretary post that the amended Act no longer reserves for a Muslim appointee — the Court declined to stay the provision but directed that, as far as possible, the appointment be made from within the Muslim community.

Provisions the Court was not persuaded to touch at the interim stage — including large parts of the "waqf by user" changes, most of the registration requirements, and the general restructuring of Boards and Councils beyond the numerical cap noted above — continue to operate as enacted, without prejudice to arguments at the final hearing.

The Court's own caveat

The bench closed its interim directions with an unusually direct clarification of what the order does and does not decide:

That sentence is the operative frame for the entire order. Every finding above — on the five-year condition, on the separation-of-powers objection to Section 3C, on Council and Board composition — is expressly prima facie and interim. None of it forecloses the constitutional arguments on either side at the eventual final hearing.

Where the case stands

As of this writing, the Supreme Court has not delivered a final judgment on the constitutional validity of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025. The 15 September 2025 order remains the operative interim arrangement — a partial, calibrated stay rather than a verdict — and the underlying Article 14, 25 and 26 challenges are still to be argued and decided. Any account describing this order as a final ruling on the Act's validity, in either direction, is inaccurate.

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Sources

• Judgment, In Re: The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, 2025 INSC 1116 (Supreme Court of India, primary source)
• Supreme Court Stays Certain Provisions of Waqf Amendment Act 2025; No Interference With Registration Requirement — LiveLaw
• Constitutionality of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 — Supreme Court Observer, case page
• Supreme Court stays key provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act 2025 — Supreme Court Observer, report