As a parliamentary panel deliberates on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, a land row in Kerala has become national news.
The Kerala State Waqf Board has long staked claim over 404 acres of land in Ernakulam district’s Munambam coast — land inhabited for generations by some 600 Christian and Hindu families.
Now, as residents protest against the Muslim body obtaining the land’s title deeds, the BJP has made it a poll issue in the upcoming bye-elections in the state, more so with the Kerala Assembly unanimously passing a resolution urging the Centre to withdraw the Waqf Amendment Bill last month.
The contentious land stretches across the villages of Kuzhuppilly and Pallipuram at Munambam, on the northern edge of the Vypin Island in Kerala’s Ernakulam district.
It has historically been home to traditional fishing communities. Some 604 families occupy the land today, around 400 of whom are Christians primarily belonging to the backward Latin Catholic community, while the rest are backward Hindus.
The genesis of the controversy can be traced to 1902, when the erstwhile Travancore royal family leased 404 acres of land, already occupied by fishing communities, to a trader named Abdul Sathar Moosa Sait, who had settled in Mattancherry near Kochi.
In 1948, his successor and son-in-law Mohammed Siddeeq Sait got the leased land registered in his name. He then decided to hand over the land to the management of Kozhikode’s Farook College, which was established in 1948 to educationally empower Muslims of Malabar (northern Kerala).
On November 1, 1950, a waqf deed was registered at the sub-registrar’s office in Edappally, Kochi, executed by Sait in favour of the president of the Farook College. A waqf deed is a document that establishes a waqf — property that is permanently dedicated for charitable or religious purposes under Islamic law.
The management of Farook College received the title deed for the land around a decade later. And in the late-1960s a legal battle began between the land’s occupants, who despite residing there for generations did not have legal documents to prove ownership, and the college’s management, which wanted to evict these occupants.
Eventually, in an out-of-court settlement, the college management decided to sell the land to its occupants at market rate. Documents show that in the sale deeds, the college management did not mention that the land in question was waqf property granted to the college management committee’s president for education. They instead said that the property was received as per a gift deed in 1950.
In the wake of some complaints against the state’s Waqf Board, the CPI(M) government under V S Achuthanandan in 2008 appointed an inquiry commission led by retired district judge M A Nissar. The terms of reference for the commission included fixing responsibility for the loss of assets by the board and recommending action for their recovery.
The commission submitted its report in 2009. In it, it deemed the land in munambam to be waqf property and said that the college management had approved of its sale without the board’s consent. It recommended action for its recovery.
Thus, in 2019, the Waqf Board suo motu declared the Munambam land to be waqf property as per Sections 40 and 41 of the Waqf Act of 1995. The board directed the Revenue Department not to accept land tax from the present occupants of the land (who had been paying taxes for several years). This directive to the Revenue Department was overruled by the state government in 2022.
This was challenged by the Waqd Board at the Kerala High Court the very same year. The court, for the time being, has stayed the state government’s decisions. Currently, more than a dozen appeals regarding this dispute are pending with the court, from the land’s occupants and the Waqf Protection Samithi.
Muslim organisations led by Indian Union Muslim League have assured that they do not want to evict the land’s occupants, and called for an out-of-court settlement instead. The Kerala government has convened a high-level meeting later this month to discuss the matter, while the BJP has seized the issue as an opportunity to further reach out to Kerala Christians.
Over the last month, the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council and other Christian bodies have been leading a vocal agitation “against the eviction” of Munambam’s inhabitants. The inhabitants want a quick resolution as without land tax receipts, they cannot mortgage their properties as collateral for acquiring loans.
