New Delhi, Dec 12 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Kerala High Court order that said notifying the Munambam land as waqf was a “land-grabbing tactic of the Kerala Waqf Board” and ordered status quo over the property in dispute.
A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Ujjal Bhuyan, however, clarified that it has not stayed the direction of the high court upholding the government order appointing an inquiry commission to ascertain ownership of the disputed area.
The dispute concerns the villages of Cherai and Munambam in Ernakulam district, where residents have alleged that the Waqf Board was unlawfully claiming their land and properties, despite them holding registered deeds and land tax payment receipts.
The top court issued a notice to the Kerala government and sought its response to a plea filed by the Kerala Waqf Samrakshana Vedi challenging the October 10 order of the high court on the 404-acre property in Munambam.
Senior advocate Huzefa Ahmadi, appearing for the petitioner, said the high court has erred in its observations by going into the issues that are to be dealt with by the Waqf Tribunal, and remarks on the validity of the Waqf deed were unwarranted, as it was not the issue involved.
He said the case before the high court was a challenge to the setting up of an inquiry commission by the state to look into the validity of the Waqf deed and the nature of the land — the two issues that are exclusively within the domain of the Waqf Tribunal.
Senior advocate Jaideep Gupta, appearing for the Kerala government, opposed the submissions and said that the Muttawalli of the concerned Waqf did not approach the high court or was not aggrieved with the constitution of the inquiry commission, and that the petitioner was a stranger to the proceedings.
He said the inquiry commission has already submitted its report to the state government.
Ahmadi submitted that the Muttawalli of the Waqf has sided with the opposite parties (the local residents).
The counsel appearing for the local residents said these are people who are poor fishermen, and the challenge to the inquiry commission has become infructuous because the report has been submitted to the state government.
He said these poor local people were never heard, and their properties were suddenly notified as Waqfs in 2019.
Senior advocate Maninder Singh, also appearing for other local residents, said that there was already a civil court decree that held that the land was not a waqf land.
The bench observed that the high court was not the right forum to go into the question of the character of the land, as the proceedings were pending before the tribunal.
Justice Misra said, “It appears that the high court has gone far beyond its remit. You are left worse off than you were before filing the writ petition. The question here is, if the (high) court comes to a conclusion that the writ petition was not maintainable, it could have stopped there.” Justice Bhuyan asked whether the high court was the appropriate forum to decide these issues.
“Can the high court go into all this? It could have set aside the order of the single judge instead of going into all this. Nobody has asked for this… The state government should have challenged all this. This order has rendered the plea redundant. The matter requires consideration. Issue notice returnable in the week commencing January 27,” the bench said while ordering status quo on the property.
The single-judge bench had quashed the appointment of the panel on March 17.
The bench further said the declaration in the impugned judgment that the property in question is not the subject matter of waqf shall remain stayed.
On October 10, the high court said that notifying the Munambam land as waqf was a “land-grabbing tactic of the Kerala Waqf Board” and had upheld the government order appointing an inquiry commission to ascertain ownership of the disputed area. It had also said that the subject property could never have been classified as a waqf property for want of compliance with mandatory procedure and provisions of the Waqf Act of 1954 and 1955.
It had held that the notifying of the land in dispute as waqf was ultra vires the provisions of the Waqf Act of 1954 and 1995 and “nothing less than a land-grabbing tactic of the Kerala Waqf Board (KWB)”.
The high court had observed that the move has “affected the bread and butter, livelihood of hundreds of families, and bona fide occupants who had purchased tranches of land decades prior to the notification of the waqf property”.
In these circumstances, the state government cannot be restrained from constituting an inquiry commission and submitting a report, the high court had said, while allowing the appeals against the single-judge order.
The state government had appointed a commission headed by former acting Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court Justice C N Ramachandran Nair in November last year to ascertain land ownership in the disputed area. PTI MNL PRK PRK
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