Mumtaz Yarud Dowla Wakf vs. M/S Badam Balakrishna Hotel Pvt. Ltd. & Ors.
Background
The appellant Wakf leased its property to the respondent for 33 years; after the lease expired, the respondent refused to vacate, disputed the lease terms, and the Wakf Tribunal decreed eviction against it in 2002 after prolonged litigation. The respondent kept resisting through appeals and, only after the Wakf filed an execution petition in 2014, twelve years after the decree and without ever earlier objecting to jurisdiction, argued for the first time that the Wakf Tribunal had no jurisdiction to decide an eviction/tenancy dispute, relying on the Supreme Court's earlier ruling in Ramesh Gobindram v. Sugra Humayun Mirza Wakf. The Telangana High Court accepted this objection and set aside the execution, prompting the Wakf's appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that an executing court generally cannot go behind a decree, and a jurisdictional objection raised for the first time at the execution stage, after two decades of litigating on merits, is an afterthought that amounts to impermissibly "approbating and reprobating." On the substantive law, relying on its more recent decision in Rashid Wali Beg v. Farid Pindari, the Court held that Section 83 of the Wakf Act gives the Wakf Tribunal jurisdiction over any dispute relating to a wakf or wakf property, which includes eviction and tenancy disputes, especially after a 2013 amendment that expressly brought such matters within the Tribunal's purview and which applies retrospectively as a procedural change. The Court accordingly set aside the High Court's order and restored the Executing Court's order allowing execution of the original 2002 decree, allowing the appeal with no costs.
Lesson Learnt
A litigant who participates fully in proceedings on the merits for years cannot spring a jurisdictional objection only at the execution stage to defeat a decree already suffered; and once a statute clearly gives Wakf Tribunals authority over disputes concerning wakf property (including tenancy and eviction), courts should not read that jurisdiction down.