A Hindu organisation based in Kerala has filed a petition in the Supreme Court, challenging the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, on the grounds that threatened the very existence of the Muslim community in India.
Filed by Sree Narayana Manava Dharmam Trust, which was established in 2023 to study the dissemination of values and teachings of the sage and philosopher Sree Narayana Guru, the plea sought intervention in a batch of petitions challenging the 2025.
It said given the teachings of Sree Narayana Guru about the inter-dependent nature of the well-being of all persons and communities, the Trust could not remain an idle spectator to the devastating impact of the impugned Act taken as a whole on the Muslim community of India and to social justice in the country.
Filed by Advocate Vaibhav Choudhary, the plea submitted that the impugned Act explicitly but erroneously treated the Waqf mechanism as a non-religious institution, thus deleting in its entirety the body of Islamic law as the basic governing law of Waqf, replacing Islamic law with the law laid down by the Impugned Act.
It alleged that the amended law imposed on the entire Muslim community of the country, an unconstitutional sui generis state-designed and state-imposed scheme for controlling charitable donations by Muslims.
Drawn and settled by Advocate G Mohan Gopal, the petition claimed the 2025 Act was ultra vires because the Parliament had no power to impose such a scheme on any section of the people. Therefore, this was a fraud on the Constitution. This sui generis state-designed and state-imposed scheme violated the constitutional rights of the Muslim community under Articles 21, 25, 26 and 29(1), it added.
The Trust claimed that the Act would leave the Muslim community without the economic and financial wherewithal to sustain the practice of their religion as a result of the government takeover of the Waqf mechanism.
The provisions of the amended Waqf law threatened the very existence of the Muslim community in India, which depended on the Waqf mechanism for its survival.
For centuries, the Waqf mechanism has been the most important source of economic and financial resources essential for the practice and survival of Islam in India. The 2025 Act would liquidate the economic and financial foundations of the Muslim community, it noted.
The petition will be heard at 2 pm today by the Bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, Justice PV Sanjay Kumar and Justice KV Viswanathan.
Earlier, the Apex Court had prohibited the filing of more petitions in the matter and said those seeking to challenge the law could move intervention applications to add to the arguments of the existing petitioners.