PILLI ANJANEYULU YADAV Vs. GOVERNMENT OF ANDHRA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Subject-matter of this writ petition is Acs. 19.12 guntas of land in S.Nos.403, 418, 419, 420 and 421 of Malkajgiri Village, Rangareddy District which is a notified Wakf land as per Gazettee Notification No.6-A, dated 9.2.1989 at Serial No.2893. The petitioner claims to have purchased the said land from one Syed Shujjath Ali Hussaini and others for valuable consideration under an agreement for sale dated 9.1.1974. According to the petitioner, he has been in possession of the said land in his own right and that Gazette Notification No.6-A, dated 9.2.1989 notifying the land as Wakf property, was issued without due enquiry and without notice to all the persons concerned including the petitioner and that therefore the said Gazette Notification No.6-A, dated 9.2.1989 is liable to be quashed by issuing of writ of certiorari under Article 226 of the Constitution. It is contention of the petitioner that the petitioner was not aware of the Gazette notification until the 4th respondent - Mazhar Educational Society erected boards in the land by raising fencing around land. Though the impugned notification is of the year 1989, the petitioner approached this Court with this writ petition in the year 2012 on the allegation that the petitioner had knowledge about the said notification only when the 4th respondent erected fencing for the land and put up Notice Board to the effect that the land belongs to the 2nd respondent - A.P. State Wakf Board and was allotted to the 4th respondent. When there is publication of notification in the Official Gazettee, it constitutes legal notice to one of all; and the petitioner cannot be heard to say that he came to know about the same only recently. In any event, remedy of the petitioner is before the Wakf Tribunal constituted under Section 83(1) of the Wakf Act, 1995 (in short, the Act) by way of filing appropriate suit or other proceeding questioning right of the 2nd respondent in the land and the notification, dated 9.2.1989.

(2.) In Board of Wakf v. Anis Fatma Begum, 2010 14 SCC 588, the Supreme Court held:

(3.) It is contended by the petitioner's Counsel that in A.P. State Wakf Board v. B. Gowra Reddy (unreported judgment of this Court, dated 21.3.2011 in Writ Appeal Nos.745, 868, 778, 885, 729 and 878 of 2002), the Division Bench considered scope of Board of Wakf, West Bengal's case , and came to the conclusion that the said decision was rendered by the Supreme Court in different factual context and that in a case where notification under Section 5 of the Wakf Act was issued without following the procedure prescribed under Section 4 of the Wakf Act and without giving notices to the persons in possession of the land and without making enquiry, then it is open to the person in possession to approach this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution and question the notification specifying a property as Wakf property.