The Madras High Court has declared unconstitutional, a 2010 amendment which brought waqf properties under the ambit of the Tamil Nadu Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act of 1976, and consequently empowered the Tamil Nadu Waqf Board Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to order eviction of encroachers in his/her capacity as Estate Officer.
Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy declared the 2010 amendment made by the State legislature to be repugnant to the Waqf Act of 1995, a Central legislation. The judges held that encroachers of waqf properties could be evicted only by waqf tribunals constituted pursuant to an amendment made to the Central legislation in 2013.
The judges agreed with a battery of lawyers led by Senior Counsel V. Raghavachari and S.R. Raghunathan that the 2010 amendment had been brought in by exercising the power under List III (Concurrent list) and not List II (State list) of seventh schedule to the Constitution and therefore, a Presidential assent ought to have been obtained for it, in view of its repugnancy with the Central law.
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