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Md. Abrar v. Meghalaya Board of Wakf and Another

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 1087Decided 26 Sept 2019
Civil Appeal No. 4025 of 2010
Justice N.V. Ramana · Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

In 1936, a man created a waqf (Islamic religious endowment) and named his son and his son-in-law as joint mutawallis (managers), with the deed providing that a surviving mutawalli could nominate a successor from the founder's "family line." Over the following decades, successive mutawallis died without formally nominating successors, leading to disputes among descendants, including descendants through the female line (via the son-in-law's side), over who was entitled to the office. The appellant, a descendant through the female line, applied to be appointed joint mutawalli, but the Wakf Tribunal and the Gauhati High Court rejected his claim, holding that descendants through the female line could only succeed after the male descendants' line was exhausted.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that there is no general rule of Muslim law barring cognatic (female-line) heirs from succeeding to a mutawalli-ship: the governing question in each case is simply what the waqf deed itself intended. Examining the 1936 deed's wording, the Court found it did not give any preference to one line of descendants over the other and that the High Court's contrary reading was legally incorrect, since nothing in the deed excluded descendants through the female line from the founder's "family line." However, because there could be multiple eligible descendants competing for the post, the Court declined to specifically declare the appellant himself entitled to the office; instead, invoking Section 63 of the Wakf Act, 1995, it directed the Wakf Board to appoint a competent person from among the eligible descendants and allowed the appeal, setting aside the High Court's judgment.

Lesson Learnt

Under Muslim personal law governing religious endowments, descendants through a daughter's line are not automatically excluded from inheriting a position like mutawalli-ship: eligibility depends entirely on the wording of the founding deed, so anyone drafting or relying on such a deed should be precise about which descendants are meant to be included.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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