Kerala HC grants State govt 6 weeks to report on filling vacancies in Waqf Board
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The Kerala High Court has granted the State government six weeks to inform it about the steps taken to fill the vacancies within the Kerala State Waqf Board.
The State had informed the Division Bench of Chief Justice Soumen Sen and Justice V.M. Syam Kumar that it had initiated the process to fill the vacancies in the board in accordance with the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development (UMEED) Act, 2025.
The State informed the court that the Chief Executive Officer, Kerala State Waqf Board, was directed to conduct a detailed determination of the number of Shia, Sunni, Bohra, Aghakhani and other backward classes in the Muslim communities to be represented in the board for further action. It was also informed that the State was ready to reconstitute the Board as soon as the number and value of the communities to be represented were determined.
The court had earlier held that the reconstitution of the board was entirely within the State’s powers and that the court would not interfere in this regard. It had orally suggested that the State could nominate two non-Muslim members to complete the requirements under the governing law.
The court was considering a batch of public interest litigations filed by BJP leader Shone George, the Assembly of Christian Trust Services (ACTS), president of Aal-E-Rasool Foundation Sajid Hussain Khatai, and junior warrant officer from the Indian Air Force, V.M. Stalin, challenging the non-inclusion of non-Muslim members in the board as mandated under the UMEED Act.
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