New Delhi: Wednesday saw the Supreme Court reject the Delhi Waqf Board’s claim to a gurudwara owned in pre-independence times, as verifications later showed the place had been used as a gurudwara since 1948. The bench formed by Justices Sanjay Karol and Satish Chandra Sharma gave the ruling while the court was in its limited summer term, completing a protracted legal problem.
The Waqf Board lodged its appeal in 2012 against the 2010 judgment of the Delhi High Court, which decided that late Hira Singh was the owner of the property given to him by Mohammad Ahsan in 1953. Singh had owned the property since 1947-48, which was proved by the High Court. Because Singh couldn’t provide formal proof of possession, the court ruled that the Waqf Board did not establish that they were the rightful owners.
According to Sanjoy Ghose, senior advocate of the Waqf Board, previous verdicts in 1982 and 1989 established that the Board is the rightful owner, and they backed their claim by referring to 1970 and 1978 notices declaring the relevant property as a waqf land (also known as Masjid Takia Babbar Shah). He also said that, before the illegal gurudwara construction, a mosque stood in the same spot.
But the Supreme Court chose not to be convinced. It is not really like a gurudwara. The court commented that there is a fully functioning gurudwara at the site, and the Board should have backed off once this evidence was found.
The top court also supported a rule set in the 1979 case, which stated that non-Muslim renters are unaffected by inclusion in a waqf list, confirming the High Court’s ruling and ending the case.
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