More than 71 years after founder of Pakistan Mohammed Ali Jinnah virtually abandoned it, the Ministry of External Affairs will take over the iconic property Jinnah House in upmarket Malbar Hills in south Mumbai and refurbish it along the lines of the Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
In a letter dated December 5, 2018, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj communicated to BJP MLA Mangal Prabhat Lodha-in whose constituency the controversial property falls -that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had accorded approval for the transfer of the property to it from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR).
Giving a background of the property, Swaraj wrote in her letter: "After Independence, Jinnah House was used by the British High Commissioner until 1982. The premises were placed under the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) from 1982. Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Secretaries in 1988 and with the approval of the then Prime Minister, Ministry of the Urban Development advised CPWD to hand over Jinnah House to Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR)," Swaraj wrote in her letter.
"In 1996, a decision was taken by the Prime Minister to establish a Cultural Centre at Jinnah House. Accordingly, Jinnah House was transferred to ICCR on 4 February 1997. It was decided to covert Jinnah House (in) to Sub-Regional Centre for SAARC," Swaraj stated.
Swaraj said that subsequently, the PMO instructed her ministry to renovate, refurbish and develop Jinnah House "on the pattern of the facilities available at the Hyderabad House in Delhi. "Accordingly, approval of PMO was sought for transfer of the property from ICCR to our Ministry. PMO has now accorded necessary approval...We are now in the process of transferring the ownership of property in our name," she stated, adding that the work on the renovation and refurbishment would start "in due course".
Jinnah House is a colonial bungalow constructed on a 2.5 acre land on Mount Pleasant Road at posh Malabar Hill in south Mumbai.
Jinnah House has historical significance considering that it was here Jinnah first discussed the issue of Partition of India and Pakistan in 1944 with Mahatma Gandhi, and later in 1946 with Congress leader Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
Incidentally, prior to Independence, top leaders of the Independence movement including Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and many others would visit Jinnah House regularly to hold crucial talks relating to India's freedom struggle and its future.
The Jinnah House was declared an "evacuee property" in 1949 under the Bombay Evacuees (Administration) of Act. It was let out to the British Deputy High Commission in 1982. Since 1948, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) used to take care of this property. In 1996, a decision was taken to hand it over to Indian Council for Cultural Relations (IICR), which finally took over the property in 2003.
It may be recalled that when Pakistan's former President Gen. Parvez Musharraf came for the Agra summit in July 2001 with the Indian government headed by the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, he had proposed that Jinnah House be give for the Pakistani Consulate in Mumbai.
Jinnah House has been entangled in property before the Bombay High Court since 2007. Mohammed Ali Jinnah's daughter and New York-based mother of industrialist Nusli Wadia, Dina Wadia, has been eyeing for this property since the 1990s. In her petition filed before the Bombay High Court on August 7, 2007, DinaWadia had urged the court to declare the Government's possession of "Jinnah House" as "illegal" and that she be given the possession of the mansion, as she was the only legal heir of late Jinnah.
However, in an affidavit filed before the Bombay High Court, the Union government had contested Dina Wadia's claim on October 4, 2007. In an affidavit filed in the same high court, the then Deputy Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) G Balasubramanian had stated that it had been a consistent stand of the Government that late Fatima Jinnah, unmarried sister of Jinnah was the "rightful legal heir" and the palatial bungalow was bequeathed to her by her brother through a will. "Fatima Jinnah migrated to Pakistan at the time of Partition and was therefore an evacuee. The property was therefore taken over by the Custodian as evacuee property," Balasubramanian had stated.
Ahead of the final hearing the property dispute on November 15, 2010, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) informed the Bombay High Court that the Centre has "absolute" legal ownership of the controversial Jinnah House at Malbar Hills in south Mumbai.
"By a notification dated June 10, 1955, issued under Section 12 of the Displaced Persons (Compensation & Rehabilitation) Act 1954, the property came to vest with the Union of India," the MEA stated in its affidavit in the court.
Earlier in the fourth week of March 2010, the oft-repeated claim by Dina Wadia that she was the legal heir to the Jinnah House at Malbar Hills in south Mumbai had fallen flat in the Bombay High Court, following the recovery of a legally certified and executed copy of the will left by Pakistan's founder bequeathing the prime property to his sister Fatima Jinnah.
Much to Dina's discomfort, a copy of Jinnah's will dated May 30, 1939 bequeathing his property to his sister Fatima Shah - which came to be legally certified and executed in her favour by the Bombay High Court in 1962 - had been traced from the records of the city-based Custodian's office of Enemy Property for India, earlier that year.