Centre urges SC to confine waqf hearing to three issues, Sibal-Singhvi oppose 'piecemeal hearing'

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to limit the hearing on pleas challenging the validity of the Waqf Act for passing interim orders to three issues on which it had submitted a comprehensive affidavit.

A bench of CJI B R Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih was asked by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to confine the proceedings identified by the earlier bench.

"The court had earmarked three issues. We had filed our response to these three issues. However, the written submissions of the petitioners now exceed several other issues," Mehta told the apex court.

I have filed my affidavit in response to these three issues. My request is to confine it to the three issues only," he added.


The three issues include:

• One of the issues is the power to denotify properties declared as waqf by courts, waqf-by-user or waqf by deed.
• The second issue raised by the petitioners relates to the composition of state waqf boards and the Central Waqf Council, where they contend only Muslims should operate except ex-officio members.
• The third issue relates to a provision that says a waqf property will not be treated as a waqf when the collector conducts an inquiry to ascertain if the property is government land.

Meanwhile, the proposition was opposed by senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi who said that there cannot be any piecemeal hearing.

Earlier on April 17, the Centre assured the apex court that it would neither denotify waqf properties, including "waqf by user", nor make any appointments to the central waqf council and boards till May 5.

The Centre had opposed the apex court's proposal to pass an interim order against the denotification of waqf properties, including "waqf by user" aside from staying a provision allowing the inclusion of non-Muslims in the central waqf councils and boards.

On April 25, the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs filed a preliminary 1,332-page affidavit defending the amended Waqf Act of 2025 and opposed any "blanket stay" by the court on a "law having presumption of constitutionality passed by Parliament".

The Centre notified the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 last month after it got President Droupadi Murmu's assent on April 5.

The bill was cleared by Lok Sabha with the support of 288 members while 232 MPs were against it. The Rajya Sabha saw 128 members voting in its favour and 95 against it.