Lakshadweep MP Challenges Waqf Amendment Act 2025, Says It Violates Rights Of Scheduled Tribe Members Practising Islam

Mohammad Hamdullah Sayeed, a Member of Parliament from Lakshadweep, has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025. 

The petitioner raises a specific challenge to Section 3E inserted in the Waqf Act, 1995 through the 2025 Amendment.  The said provision bars the creation of Waqf over properties in tribal areas covered under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution.

Sayeed, belonging to the Indian National Congress, contends that the impugned provision compels individuals like him, who are both members of Scheduled Tribes under the Fifth Schedule and practising Muslims, to choose between their tribal and religious identities. The petition argues that this forced binary infringes upon fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14 (equality before the law), 25 and 26 (freedom of religion), and 300A (right to property) of the Constitution.

"The Petitioner most respectfully submits that the Impugned Provision, though ostensibly enacted to safeguard tribal land, imposes an unreasonable and disproportionate restriction on the fundamental rights of Muslim members of a Schedule Tribe. The Impugned Provision is not narrowly tailored to serve a legitimate state interest. Measures less restrictive and more proportionate could have served the same purpose without wholly extinguishing a core religious practice. The Petitioner humbly submits that many tribes under the Fifth Schedule areas like Bakkarwals in Jammu and Kashmir and the Nat Community found across North India have members professing Islam as their religion. Even in the Sixth Schedule areas one finds members of Schedule Tribe professing and following Islam as a religion," the petition states.

The petitioner contends that the impugned provision breeds bias by arbitrarily excluding members of Scheduled Tribes professing Islam from exercising an essential religious and charitable obligation while permitting non-Tribal Muslims to do the same and compelling such members of Scheduled Tribes to choose between their religious or tribal identity. Hence, Article 14 of the Constitution is violated. Also, this amounts to an unreasonable restriction on a person's right to utilise one's property as per one's wishes.

Previously, a Member of the Manipur Legislative Assembly, Sheikh Noorul Hassan, also filed a petition challenging the very same provision on similar arguments that it infringed upon the rights of persons belonging to Scheduled Tribes who profess Isn

The plea has been filed through Advocate-on-Record Anas Tanwir