On February 28, Monday, the Gujarat State Waqf Tribunal urged the Bar Council Gujarat (BCG) to take legal action against four lawyers for their alleged ‘inappropriate’ behaviour during a hearing. The Tribunal was miffed because the lawyers accused two of the tribunal members of recusing themselves from the case as they belonged to the Sunni sect.
According to a Times of India report, the tribunal was considering a dispute over the Hazrat Maulana Mehboob Dargah, Masjid, and Kabrastan Trust in Anavada village, Patan district in North Gujarat.
Sunni sect members claimed that the trust’s management was made up of Shia sect members. They claimed that members of the Dawoodi Bohra community had acquired control of the trust and that the management should be given over to Sunnis.
On January 18, lawyers for the respondents, who represented the Bohras and their religious head, got into a heated debate with the tribunal members during an online session.
Manish Shah, one of the lawyers, argued that the Waqf Board hears the case better than the tribunal. This did not sit well with the panel, which noted that the lawyer claimed that the tribunal did not hear the case in a legal manner.
Three additional lawyers, VR Agrawal, Rajesh Modi, and Kaiser Merchant, were also allegedly found to have acted improperly during the hearing by the Waqf Tribunal, stated the TOI report.
The Waqf Tribunal maintained that lawyers VR Agrawal and Rajesh Modi had claimed that the members of the tribunal – chairman Al-Shaikh and one of the two members, Rizwan Qadri – are Sunni and were therefore in a rush to hear the case. They argued that because the issue included a dispute between Sunni and Shia sects, the matter should not be heard by these members.
The panel also noted that the other senior lawyers maintained decorum and insisted that similar arguments be avoided by lawyers.
As regards the dispute over the trust, the tribunal overturned the Waqf Board’s decision to allow the names of members of the Dawoodi Bohra community to be entered into the trust. The Waqf Act prohibits the conversion of a Sunni trust to a Shia trust and vice versa, according to the tribunal. The tribunal was likewise dissatisfied with the board official’s excess of his mandate and recommended action against him too.
