High Court Petition Alleges Waqf Board’s Omission of Statutorily Required Non‑Muslim Members

On the sixth of June, two thousand twenty‑six, an affidavit‑supported petition was entered before the Honourable High Court of the State, alleging that the State Waqf Board, a statutory custodian of religious endowments, is presently functioning in contravention of the explicit statutory mandate requiring the inclusion of persons not professing the Islamic faith among its members, a requirement whose omission, the petitioners assert, not only transgresses the Waqf Act, but also imperils the constitutional guarantee of equitable representation in public bodies.

The governing legislation, namely the Waqf (Management) Act of nineteen ninety‑five, as amended by subsequent ordinances, expressly stipulates in its Section Twenty‑Three that a minimum of one‑tenth of the Board’s composition shall consist of individuals belonging to communities other than Islam, a provision historically intended to ensure communal oversight, fiscal transparency, and a broader public confidence in the administration of charitable immovable property.

The petitioners, identified as a coalition of local civil‑society advocates, a minority‑rights legal clinic, and an aggrieved former board member whose tenure concluded amidst allegations of marginalisation, contend that despite numerous formal reminders dispatched to the Minister of Minority Affairs, the Board has persistently failed to appoint the requisite non‑Muslim members, thereby violating not only the specific statutory clause but also the broader constitutional edicts enshrined in Articles Fourteen and Fifteen which prohibit discrimination on grounds of religion in the composition of bodies performing public functions.

In a rejoinder filed subsequent to the petition, the Board’s secretary‑general maintained that the alleged requirement had been inadvertently overlooked owing to an administrative oversight during the most recent restructuring, and further asserted that the selection of future members would be undertaken in accordance with the prevailing procedural guidelines, yet offered no substantive timetable, thereby leaving the enquiry unresolved and the statutory breach unabated.

The practical repercussions of this omission have manifested in a series of grievances voiced by ordinary residents who rely upon waqf‑administered facilities such as schools, hospitals, and burial grounds, who assert that the absence of diverse representation on the Board has led to opaque decision‑making, delayed maintenance of assets, and occasional misallocation of revenue, thereby eroding public trust and threatening the very charitable objectives for which the endowments were originally constituted.

Within the broader municipal framework, the State’s Department of Minority Welfare has long professed a commitment to inclusive governance, yet the present controversy illuminates a disjunction between policy pronouncements and operational execution, a pattern echoed in other statutory bodies where procedural checklists remain unmonitored, thereby exposing a systemic vulnerability that permits statutory infractions to persist unchecked.

Legal commentators have observed that the judiciary, when confronted with analogous instances of statutory non‑compliance, has not shied from invoking its equitable jurisdiction to issue mandamus orders compelling immediate rectification, a precedent that, if applied here, could compel the Board to induct the stipulated non‑Muslim representatives forthwith, whilst simultaneously signalling to other quasi‑governmental entities the seriousness with which the courts regard faithful adherence to legislative intent.

Given that the statutory framework explicitly obliges the Board to incorporate members of other faiths, one must inquire whether the continued neglect of this duty constitutes a breach of constitutional guarantees of non‑discrimination and, if so, what remedial measures the judiciary is prepared to impose to restore statutory fidelity and public confidence in the stewardship of charitable assets? Moreover, does the apparent lapse in ministerial oversight reveal a latent deficiency in the mechanisms designed to monitor compliance of statutory corporations, thereby necessitating a reevaluation of the powers vested in the Department of Minority Welfare to enforce representation requirements with timely and effective sanctions? Finally, in the broader context of civic administration, can ordinary residents, whose daily lives are intertwined with the services rendered by such boards, realistically expect to hold accountable an institution that simultaneously claims charitable purpose yet evades the very legal mandates intended to safeguard inclusive governance, and what legislative reforms might be required to ensure that the principle of proportional representation is not merely a decorative clause but a binding operative standard?

Published: June 5, 2026