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The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025- An analysis of its impact in India

Publications, Research paper

Abstract

The concept of “Waqf” has been developed in Islam. The literal meaning of Waqf is detention and stoppage but in technical sense Waqf denotes dedicating some movable or immovable properties for the religious purpose in perpetuity. These Waqf properties are managed by The Waqf Board which plays an important role in protecting the properties and it has the legal authority to administer and to ensure the proper utilization of these. The first major enactment relating to Waqf is The Waqf Act,1954, which laid down the provisions for managing these properties. But by the passing of time the modification and upgradation of law occurs which results in replacement of the prevailing act by The Waqf Act, 1995 for ensuring more transparency in governing the Waqf properties. Recently, The Indian Parliament introduced The Waqf (Amendment) Bill,2025 in order to enhance the governance, transparency, and efficiency for managing the waqf properties in India which has got the assent of the Indian President and became an Act. The main objective of this act is to improve the registration process and resolving the legal disputes regarding waqf property and facilitating the waqf board operations. The research paper attempts to find out the reasons for amending the previous Waqf Acts. The Scholar attempts to explain both the positive impact and negative impact of The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 in India with the intention to give it a holistic view.

Keywords

Religious purpose, Waqf Board, Waqf Property, Waqf Act, Transparency, Amendment.

Introduction

“Once a waqf, always a Waqf”- This doctrine denotes that once a person who is practicing Islam donates his property for the religious purpose can never get back the property and the property becomes a waqf property. The person who donates his property become waqif and the waqf property goes under the control of the Central Waqf Board. The Waqf Board appoints a Mutawalli to manage the property. According to some Muslim jurists, Waqf is the detention of a thing in the implied ownership of Almighty God in such a way that its profits revert back to its creatures for their benefits. Thus, the basic elements of Waqf are – Ownership of God, The extinction of Founder’s rights, Benefits of Mankind, Permanent dedication of Property.

Under Muslim Law, Waqf is of 2 kinds one is Public Waqf and another is Private Waqf. Public Waqf is created for the beneficial enjoyment of the public or the society and Private Waqf is created for the beneficial enjoyment of one’s family which is also known as Waqf-alal-aulad. The Public Waqf is used to build mosques, graveyards, schools and hospitals for achieving the charitable and religious ends. To manage all these purposes the various legislations are enacted. From those various legislations we firstly discuss the very recent Waqf amendment bill,2025 in detail.

The Parliament passed the Waqf (Amendment) Bill on 4th April,2025 after an intensive debate in both the houses of Parliament (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha). The 2025 Amendment enhances the Union’s control over The Waqf properties. The amendment removes the concept of “Waqf by User” for the upcoming future properties, it also increases the government’s involvement in managing the waqf assets, includes the Non- Muslim members in Waqf Board, provides an inheritance opportunity to Muslim female heirs. The Act renamed the Waqf Act,1995 to Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development Act,1995 (UWMEED Act,1995).

The act further states that a person who is practicing Islam for at least five years can donate his property for the purpose of waqf and a Waqf can be done by Declaration also. It helps to streamline the registration process of Waqfs through the central portal and database and gives a special power to collectors for the survey of waqf properties. The act lays down the detailed procedure for mutation of the properties according to the revenue laws with due notice to all concerned before recording a property as Waqf property so that the interest of any person in the property doesn’t get harmed which results in more transparency in the process. This act also reforms the structure of the Tribunal with two members and gives an opportunity of appeal to the High Court. The act allows for establishing separate Waqf Boards for Sunni and Shia sects and also separate Waqf Boards for Aghakhani and Bohra sects.

The Waqf Board

The Waqf Board presently undertakes 8.7 lakh properties and the spanning of the properties is 9.4 lakh acre across India the market value of which is 1.2 lakh crores. The largest waqf holding country in the world is India. In the Index of land holdings in India, The Waqf Board occupied 3rd position after the Armed Forces and Indian Railways. According to various reports and journals, there are 356,051 Waqf estates, 872,328 immovable properties, 16,713 movable properties registered under The Waqf Board. 

Research Methodology

This Research paper is descriptive of nature and the research and data collection is based on the secondary sources for the analysis of the Waqf (Amendment) Act,2025, the changes made in this enactment, the relevance of the act in India. Secondary sources of information like Journals, Websites, Textbooks are used for the research work.

Review of Literature

The ultimate need for amending any act is the loopholes present in an existing statute. As known to us ‘Amendment’ means something to add on, something to alter and something to repeal to the Act. The research paper tries to critically analyze The Waqf Act, 1954 and The Wakf Act,1995 which necessitate the introduction of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025. The Wakf Act 1954 was introduced after India’s independence to regulate and manage the waqf properties and established a Central Wakf Council to oversee the operations of various State Waqf Boards but still there is an absence of proper efficiency and transparency in management of Waqf assets.

 The Waqf Act 1995 was introduced to regulate and manage the Waqf Properties with the aim to ensure the proper administration, maintenance and utilization of Waqf properties. There are also certain shortcomings in this act – Waqf could be formed by declaration, user or endowment i.e. the concept of Waqf by user is present there which makes the properties inalienable , there is no clear provision regarding whether government property is Waqf or not this will create various property disputes. Previously The Waqf board enjoyed a monopoly of power. The board can determine whether a property is a waqf property and also can enjoy monopoly in resolving the disputes relating to Waqf properties. Under the Act only the assigned survey commissioners and additional survey commissioner has the power to survey the Waqf properties. There is the Central Waqf Council to advise the Central and State Governments and The Waqf Boards and the Council consists of only Muslim Members including at least two female members there is high chances of religious biases. The composition of the Tribunal is A Muslim law expert, A State officer and A State level Tribunal led by a Judge of First class or District or Sessions or Civil Judge. The decisions of the Tribunal are final and there is no scope for appeals against those decisions; only the High Court can intervene under special circumstances. The involvement of the Central Government is very less regarding Waqf; only the State Governments have some power regarding the Waqf Accounts. 

For addressing these problems, one more amendment was made in the year 2013 Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2013 on the basis of Sachar Committee report. In this report it was shown The Muslim Community faced a lot of socio-economic challenges for the improper utilization of Waqf properties. This Committee provided various recommendations regarding registration process, inheritance rights of women and recruitment of various law experts other than Muslims in Waqf Board and so on. The Waqf (Amendment) Act,2013, introduced several changes to The Waqf Act 1995. It strengthened the functioning of the tribunals and also created The Central Waqf Council to oversee the functioning of State Waqf Boards.

Objectives

The main objectives for the passing of The Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025 are discussed elaborately and they are as follows-

  1. The Various Waqf properties are managed inadequately across India for a long period of time. Besides this there are many cases of illegal encroachment of properties, no adequate registration process, mutation process was omitted according to revenue laws which creates lots of property disputes and in order to address this problem the Amendment of 2025 was done.
  2. Section 40 of The Waqf Act 1995 states that The Waqf board has the power to determine whether a property shall be included in Waqf property, this section provides an arbitrary power to the Waqf Board and there was also a concept of ‘Waqf by User’ which denotes if a property is used for any religious or charitable purposes or open for public use for a long time then the property considered as a Waqf property. Now for the abolishment of these arbitrary provisions and concepts the Amendment of 2025 was done.
  3. The legal framework in the Previous Act (The Waqf Act 1995) was very weak, there were no provisions for appeal and the decisions of The Waqf Tribunal was the final. If the tribunal gave any arbitrary decision there was no way to challenge it. For strengthening the legal framework and ensuring more adequate decision; the amendment of 2025 introduced the concept of limitation act and opened a way to appeal in the High Court within the stipulated period of time.
  4. Previously The Waqf Boards and Councils consisted of only Muslim members and the Non-Muslim members were not allowed which limited the scope of decision making. For delimiting the boundaries the Amendment of 2025 was done it helps to enhance the scope of decision making.
  5. The Waqf Act 1995 allowed the Non-Muslims also to donate their properties for the purpose of Waqf that means for religious or charitable purposes. This provision helped to access more properties as Waqf property but The Amendment of 2025 creates a barrier in the rule. It provides that only the persons who profess Islam for at least 5 years can be eligible to donate their property as Waqf property.
  6. The Waqf Act 1995 did not provide any clear provision regarding the property dispute between the Government and the Waqf Board but the Amendment of 2025 makes a clear provision that if any property is identified as Government- property then it will cease to be a Waqf property anymore.

The aforesaid objectives make it clear The Waqf (Amendment)Act, 2025 is very purposeful to subtract the existing inadequacies from the concept of Waqf. Moreover, The Joint Parliamentary Committee presents some reasons in their report which would necessitate The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2024 include-

  1. Complaints regarding the appointment of Mutawalli, illegal encroachment of land and mismanagement.
  2. There is the utter need to rationalize the powers of The State Waqf Board and inclusion of Non-Muslim members for improving the management.
  3. Manual registration process creates lots of delay that’s why there is a need for a computerization method which also helps in reducing the expenses.
  4. Reducing the contribution from Auqaf to State Waqf Boards from 7% to 5% of net annual income with the objective for the better service of Auqaf in charitable and religious purposes.

Case Laws

There are various famous and landmark judgements of various courts relating to the topic “Waqf Property”. Some of them are discussed below-

SYED MOHD. SALIE LABBAI & ORS. v. MOHD. HANIFA & OTHERS

The facts of the case are a land dispute spanning over 150 years between two factions of the Muslim community in village Vijayapuram in The State of Madras. Where the land was acquired by a muslim saint and the predecessors of the respondent with the majority of the villagers sought the permission of the Saint to build a mosque on the land and an agreement was executed mentioning that predecessors of the respondent were constructing a prayer hall on the raised platform belonging to the ancestor of the appellants with his permission.Over time additional construction were added, which served as adjuncts to the mosque. After passing long years the appellants claimed the properties as their private properties and they had a right to manage it.

The Supreme court is of opinion that the mosque and its adjuncts constituted waqf property as a single unit and though it had been used for a long time, culminating into a valid and binding Public Waqf. It also held that the graveyard was a public Waqf as it has been used for a large number of years without the objection of the owner. The Court rejected the plea of the appellant of the hereditary right to administer the mosque and found that the suit was not barred by Section 55(2) of The Waqf Act, 1954. The Court also held that Section 92 of The Code of Civil Procedure Code, applied as the appellants were not trustees.

ABDUL FATA MOHD. IRSHAD v. RASSOMOY DHUR CHOWDHARY

The main facts of this case are two Muslim brothers created a waqf for the descendants of the family from one generation to another on total extinction of the family for the ultimate benefit of the widows and orphans. Thus, the waqf is mainly created for the welfare of only the settler’s family and there is no concern of charity. 

The Privy Council held that if the basic object of creating Waqf is the aggrandizement of the family and the gift to charity is illusory whether from the small account or from its uncertainty and remoteness, the Waqf is invalid and no effect can be given to it.

FASEELA M. v. MUNNERUL ISLAM MADARSA COMMITTEE & ORS.

 In this case respondent Munnerul Islam Madarasa Committee filed a suit for eviction against the appellant before the Waqf Tribunal, inter alia, setting of the plea that the respondent is the landlord and appellant is tenant in the subject property.The subject property is described as waqf property.The core content of this case revolves around the question for determining whether the suit for eviction by the landlord against tenant relating to waqf property is triable by the civil court or the suit lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of The Waqf Tribunal.

The Supreme Court of India observed that Sections 6 and 7 of The Waqf Act,1995 as amended by Section 27 of Act 2013 for determining of certain disputes relating to auqaf only by the Waqf Tribunal. While dealing with this case the court also referred the judgement delivered in the case RAMESH GOBIND RAM v. SUGRA HUMAYUN MIRZA Waqf where the court considered Section 6(a), 6(5), 7(1), 83, 85 for explaining the jurisdiction of the Waqf Tribunal and The Civil Court. The Supreme Court held in the subsequent case that the subject matter of the case doesn’t fall under Section 6 and 7 of The Waqf Act,1995 so there is no exclusive jurisdiction of The Waqf Tribunal and the case can be disposed of by The Civil Court.

MADANURI SRI RAMA CHANDRA MURTHY v. SYED JALAL

 The Supreme Court lays down that after the commencement of The Waqf (Amendment) Act 2013 a property can be regarded as waqf property when it is published in the Official Gazette as a Waqf property. In this case The Tribunal and The High Court have held a property in question on the basis of the fact the property was not listed in the Official Gazette as a Waqf property. And the non-inclusion of the property can also never be questioned by any person or The Waqf Board because the board has no jurisdiction over this matter. Thus, the property in this case cannot be regarded as Waqf property and the transfer of this property by any private individual (owner) cannot be prevented as well as challenged.

Constitutional Validity of The Act

The Waqf (Amendment) Act was introduced in The House of People of The Indian Parliament on August 8th in the year 2024 with the concern to repeal The Mussalman Waqf Act 1923 and for the purpose of amending The Waqf Act 1995. In the first instance the proposed amendment is badly criticized and thereafter it refers to The Joint Parliamentary Committee. Then the Joint Parliamentary Committee took the opinion of various experts, stakeholders and different organizations and incorporated 25 recommendations with the aim to reduce inequality, mismanagement and curb the misuse of Waqf. After The Waqf Amendment bill gets the assent of the president over 65 petitions are filed in the Supreme Court from politicians, civil organizations, advocates for challenging the constitutional validity of This act which will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court of India.

The petitioner of The Case is Asaduddin Owaisi & others and The Respondent is Union of India which is heard by The Division Bench of Chief Justice of India. The proceedings in the Supreme Court regarding the constitutional validity of The Act is still ongoing and the final decision on this matter doesn’t come yet.

Criticisms

Under this head we will highlight the opinion of various critics regarding The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 and try to analyze the negative impact of this act from the eyes of the critics. They are as follows-

  • According to Asaduddin Owaisi of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), the primary objective of the bill is to weaken Muslim rights and undermine the basis of Waqf governance.
  • According to some opponents of that bill, the main goal of the amendment is to increase the interference of the Central Government and State Government in the management and governance of Waqf properties.
  • The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 provides for recruitment of two Non-Muslim members to the State level Waqf Boards. This provision is also criticized on the basis of the point that it will infringe the constitutionality of the community which guarantees the freedom to self-govern.
  • The abolishment of Section 40 of The Waqf Act 1995 which deals with the concept of Waqf by User has also faced criticism. This concept helps to encroach a wide range of private properties by The Waqf Board. The critics are of the view that the abolishment of this concept would directly affect the religious beliefs and customs of a community.
  • According to the previous Waqf Acts the decision of the Waqf Tribunal in case of a waqf property disputes is final and binding but the Amendment of 2025 opens a way to appeal to The High Court. This concept is also criticized from the point of self-governance and community affairs.
  • The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 limits the concept of ‘Waqif”- any person can be eligible to become a Waqif only when he was practicing Islam for the minimum period of 5 years. The opinion of the critics is that- the provision will try to rule over the personal choices or willingness of a person (Especially a non- muslim) who wants to donate his movable or immovable property permanently for any religious and charitable purposes.

Suggestions

The Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025 is a legislative enactment which is created to cure the managemental diseases of the waqf system. This Amendment is done for giving more efficiency, transparency, good governance, proper administration to the Waqf system for getting better results. This will ultimately prioritize the welfare of Muslim Community. The changes made in the Act should be judged also from the perspective of human welfare not only from the religious perspectives. The inclusion of Non-Muslim members in the Waqf Board aims to make the board more balanced which would help them to make more wise decisions in future. As per The Sachar Committee report, The large number of land holdings of The Waqf Board if properly and efficiently used then it will be possible to generate minimum revenue of 10% in terms of money it almost 12000 crores per annum. The efficient use of property is very necessary in developing countries like India which would help in the free flow of money or assets in order to balance and strengthen the economy.

Conclusion

The Waqf Amendment of 2025 is done in order to reform the rigid concept of Waqf system and to provide a greater ambit to the system. The reforms are made of technicality, gender equality, individuality and so many modern concepts. As we know the literal meaning of amendment is to make changes, the concept of change is an ordinary course of life. The reforms which are made in The Waqf Act will be more helpful in the future activities of The Waqf Board because after the amendment the concept became more secular in nature. It is also impactful in women empowerment in our country. The technical reforms made in the Act will help to get more reliable data about the quantity of properties, their usefulness and the income generated through it. These changes will make the system more transparent and well ordered. 

Madhurima Mondal

South Calcutta Law College