CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Shaista Ambar, the founder and president of the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) has said that the Waqf Boards should step up to ensure the life and livelihood of women and children.
Ambar was speaking in reference to the Supreme Court’s order on Muslim women’s right to seek maintenance from their husbands – as a matter of right and not charity. The AIMWPLB has been advocating more equal rights for women in marriage. In 2022, it approached the Supreme Court to annul unilateral talaqs, retrospectively too, if need be. “People do not know it, but, Waqf is to be used for divorced women, orphaned children and destitute”, she said.
Ambar said such provisions were made in the Waqf Board Act which was amended in 1995. Numerous judicial pronouncements too have given the executive the power to direct the board to pay such sums of money to a widow/divorcee that are necessary to maintain herself.
In 1996, in the case titled The Secretary Tamil Nadu Wakf Board vs Syed Fatima Nachi, the SC noted, “Where a divorced woman is unable to maintain herself and she has no relatives… or such relatives or any one of them have not enough means to pay the maintenance… the Magistrate may, by order, direct the State Wakf Board… to pay such maintenance as determined by him.”
Ambar said that as India was not an Islamic state, it lacked bodies like Baitulmal which could provide monetary help to those in need; the Waqf board needed to step up.
“It is not just the responsibility of individuals. Boards should set up training centres for skill development, give out their land for small-scale enterprises so that women and their children can earn their livelihood with dignity”, Ambar said.