Bombay High Court Orders Fresh Waqf Trust Elections in Buldhana Within Two Months

A dispute that has consumed years of litigation over who legitimately leads a small mosque trust in Maharashtra's Buldhana district reached a turning point in December when the Bombay High Court stepped in to untangle a governance mess and order fresh elections within two months.

The Choti Masjid Trust, which manages religious and community affairs in the district, has been locked in conflict over the validity of its 2019 trustee election. Abdul Rahman Abdul Razzaque and others were elected to five-year terms on February 25, 2019, and the Maharashtra State Waqf Board approved their appointment paperwork on September 1, 2021. But the trust itself challenged that approval, arguing the election was marred by serious flaws: a defective voters' list, an Election Officer without proper authority, and other procedural breakdowns. The Waqf Tribunal, hearing the challenge, agreed. On June 16, 2023, it invalidated the entire 2019 election and sided with the trust's objections. The elected trustees, now facing removal, appealed to the High Court.

At the heart of the dispute lay a 1989 governing scheme—the document that is supposed to spell out how the trust operates, who can vote, and how elections happen. But the scheme was written in language so vague and contradictory that no one could agree on what it actually meant. Clauses 8(C) and 8(D), which deal with trustee qualifications and voter eligibility, were so ambiguous that lawyers for both sides called them "autocratic in nature." The scheme set a voting age requirement but left it unclear whether voters had to be 18 or 21 years old. It defined who counted as a "trustee" in ways that could be read multiple ways. It never spelled out election rules at all, leaving the whole process to interpretation.

When the case reached Justice Shailesh P. Brahme of the Aurangabad Bench, he faced a choice: send the matter back for endless reinterpretation, or provide clarity that would let an election actually happen. He chose the latter. The judge examined the scheme line by line and issued a series of clarifications. The qualifying age for voters, he ruled, is 21 years and above—the scheme's language, read carefully, could not support any other reading. The term "trustee" in the scheme, he clarified, should be understood to include members and voters of the trust, not just sitting office-holders. He defined the geographic area from which voters must come: Peth Ahmedpur village and its surrounding vicinity, including Amboda Naka and nearby landmarks. These clarifications, the judge emphasized, were temporary—a stopgap until the Waqf Board itself rewrites or amends the scheme under the legal authority granted to it.

The court then issued its directive: fresh elections must be held within two months, following the existing scheme as now clarified by the court. The Waqf Board can continue processing any pending applications to modify the scheme, but those applications cannot delay the election. Once the Board does frame a new or modified scheme, it will take over from the court's interim guidance. For now, the court's interpretation serves as the operating procedure.

What emerges from this ruling is a pragmatic solution to a governance deadlock. The scheme was broken, but rather than declare it unworkable, the court fixed it—at least temporarily. The elected trustees get a chance to contest their removal through a fresh election held under rules that are now clear. The trust's concerns about procedural irregularities can be addressed in that new process. And the Waqf Board, which has the formal power to reshape the scheme, is pushed to actually do its job. The court's language suggests impatience with the years of back-and-forth: the clarifications "would facilitate a free and transparent election without any confusion." Two months is a tight timeline, but it is a timeline. The dispute that has consumed the trust's energy since at least 2023 now has a deadline for resolution.