The battle for Jinnah House at Malabar Hill isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon.
Chief justice of the Bombay high court,justice Swatanter Kumar has been elevated to the Supreme Court and the matter has been adjourned till February2010. This means that the petitioner, Dina Wadia, 90, daughter of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and the respondent (the Union government) will have to argue their cases afresh.
“The same bench will not be available for hearing the case in February 2010, so the matter will be heard by a newly constituted bench,” said lawyer Shrikant Doijode, Wadia’s advocate.
Additional solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam who represents the Centre said: “We will have to start arguments again.”
Wadia, a resident of UK, before moving the high court in August, 2007, had been writing to the Indian government and to the Pakistan government since 1982 to hand over the possession of Jinnah House, which was constructed in 1917.
“There is no will of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, neither original nor a certified copy,” argued senior counsel Fali Nariman representing Wadia.
Nariman also argued that the Central government had wrongly declared the heritage property as evacuee property under the Evacuee Properties Act, 1949. “Jinnah died in September 1948, before the Evacuee Properties Act was enacted in India. Hence his property was never an evacuee property,” he said. He argued that Jinnah was a Khoja Muslim and this sect follow Hindu law not the law of Shariat.
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