The dispute in Habib Alladin v. Mohammed Ahmed, decided by the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. Vinod Chandran on Wednesday (January 28) arose from a familiar urban setting: a residential apartment complex where a section of the ground floor was claimed to have functioned as a mosque for years. Residents asserted a right to pray there and sought an injunction before the Waqf Tribunal. The property owner countered that no mosque existed, that the sanctioned plan showed none, and that the space had never been notified or registered as waqf under the Waqf Act, 1995.Yet the Supreme Court was careful not to be drawn into the religious or historical merits of that claim. Instead, it identified the real fault line running through contemporary waqf litigation: whether an assertion of waqf by user can itself open the doors of the Waqf Tribunal.The top court’s answer was a clear no. Waqf by user, it implied, cannot be allowed to function as a jurisdictional shortcut, though, for the record, it claimed it would not consider the issue, “since the question is still at large”. Before the special machinery of the Waqf Act is set in motion, claims of waqf must pass through statutory recognition and civil law filters laid down by Parliament, the Court held. This insistence on process, rather than proclamation, shapes the entire judgment.Section 83 and the temptation of expansive powerMuch of the confusion in waqf jurisprudence has stemmed from Section 83 of the Act, which authorises the constitution of Waqf Tribunals to decide disputes “relating to a waqf or waqf property.” Over time, this language has been stretched to suggest that tribunals enjoy sweeping jurisdiction over any dispute in which the word “waqf” is invoked.In Habib Alladin, the Supreme Court decisively resists that drift. Section 83, the Court explains, is not a fountainhead of unlimited power. It is procedural in character and operates only in aid of specific substantive provisions – principally Sections 6 and 7 – that deal with disputes over properties already recognised as waqf. To read it otherwise would be to invert the statutory scheme, allowing the forum to determine its own reach, the Court suggested.By returning to this narrower construction, the Supreme Court reaffirms a principle that has often been honoured more in breach: exclusion of civil court jurisdiction must be express, limited, and tied to clearly defined subject matter.Why Supreme Court refused to decide waqf by userA striking feature of the judgment is the top court’s express refusal to decide whether the property in question could, in law, be treated as a waqf by user. The bench notes that the issue remains at large and consciously leaves it untouched.This restraint is neither accidental nor evasive. Waqf by user sits at the heart of the ongoing constitutional challenge to the Waqf (Amendment) Act, particularly concerns about how easily private property may be drawn into the waqf regime without adequate safeguards. A definitive pronouncement in Habib Alladin would have risked prejudging questions that are now before a larger bench.Instead, the Court chooses a stabilising path. It makes clear that even assuming a claim of waqf by user is legally tenable, such a claim does not, by itself, confer jurisdiction on a Waqf Tribunal. The doctrine may survive for consideration elsewhere, but it cannot be used to bypass the statutory architecture of recognition, registration, and adjudication.Reclaiming the civil court’s threshold roleOne of the most tangible consequences of the judgement is its reaffirmation of the civil court’s place in waqf disputes. Where waqf status itself is contested, and where the property is neither notified nor registered, the civil court remains the proper forum. Injunctions, possessory claims, and disputes over access cannot be decided by a tribunal unless the foundational condition of recognised waqf status is first met.This recalibration has immediate practical effect. It prevents property owners from being drawn into specialised tribunal proceedings at the very outset, before their basic rights are tested. At the same time, it does not deny genuine waqf claims; it merely insists that they be channelled through the routes the law prescribes.A quiet correction to recent precedentThe Supreme Court in Rashid Wali Beg v Farid Pindari (2022) held that Section 83 of the 1995 Act conferred Tribunal’s jurisdiction to adjudicate upon any dispute and answer any question relating to a waqf or waqf property. However, the Court in Ramesh Gobindram v Sugra Humayun Mirza Waqf, (2010) – by a coordinate bench – had taken a contrary stand. The bench, on Wednesday, therefore, held that Rashid Wali Beg requires reconsideration. Although the apex court does not formally overrule Rashid Wali Beg, its disagreement with that decision is evident. Where Rashid Wali Beg treated Section 83 as conferring wide jurisdiction, Habib Alladin restores the primacy of Ramesh Gobindram and warns against interpretive expansion untethered from statutory text.This matters because Rashid Wali Beg has often been cited to justify broad tribunal intervention, particularly in disputes invoking waqf by user. After Habib Alladin, such reliance becomes precarious. Tribunal jurisdiction must now be shown, not assumed.Resonance with the pending constitutional challengeSeen against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s interim order in the pending challenge to the Waqf Amendment Act, Habib Alladin performs an important function. The interim order sought to prevent irreversible consequences while constitutional questions remain unresolved. This judgment complements that approach by narrowing the everyday operation of waqf law through interpretation.By ensuring that waqf by user cannot be pressed into service as an automatic gateway to tribunal power, the top court reduces the risk of overreach during a period of constitutional uncertainty. It stabilises the legal terrain without settling the deeper questions that await authoritative resolution.What the judgment ultimately does – and does not – doHabib Alladin does not pronounce on the validity of the Waqf Amendment Act. It does not abolish waqf by user. Nor does it constitutionalise property rights under Article 300A. What it does instead is more modest and, in the present moment, more consequential.It insists that waqf by user, however contested or enduring, cannot short-circuit the statutory scheme. Recognition must precede jurisdiction. Civil adjudication must precede specialised intervention. In reaffirming these boundaries, the Supreme Court quietly reins in institutional power at a time when the legitimacy of that power itself is under constitutional scrutiny.That quiet recalibration – rather than any dramatic doctrinal leap – is what gives Habib Alladin its lasting significance.