A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court Friday said the disputed Munambam land near Kochi “could never have been classified as Waqf property”.Acting upon an appeal moved by the state government against a Single Bench order that cancelled the appointment of an inquiry commission to find a resolution to the dispute, the Division Bench of Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice Syam Kumar V.M said the “action of the Kerala Waqf Board of declaring/registering the Munambam property as a Waqf property through its declarations and orders are bad in law”.The Munambam land dispute involves a disputed 404-acre land in Ernakulam district’s Munambam coast inhabited for generations by some 600 Christian and Hindu families. In 2019, Waqf Board staked claim on this land on the basis of a Waqf deed from 1950.The Kerala government had set up a judicial commission to give recommendations for a resolution, but a Single Bench of the Kerala HC had cancelled the panel in April. A Division Bench had temporarily stayed this order.Setting aside the Singh Bench’s April order, the Division Bench said Friday that the government was at liberty to proceed with the implementation of the commission’s recommendations. In May, the commission had recommended that the government should acquire the 400 acres of disputed land if the occupants fail to get justice in the court.Referring to the 1950 deed, the court said it was never intended to create any “permanent dedication in favour of the Almighty God”, but was simply a gift deed in favour of Farooq Management. Merely because the deed was named a Waqf endowment cannot give it the Waqf character, the court said.However, the Division Bench said that the Single Bench can go into the question of whether the Waqf board had acted fairly, reasonably, and in compliance with the statutory provisions, and even hold its action illegal, despite the availability of an alternative remedy before the Waqf Tribunal.Story continues below this adThe genesis of the controversy can be traced to early 1900s, 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).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 president of the college management committee for the purpose of education. They instead said that the property was received according to a gift deed in 1950.Story continues below this adIn 2019, the State Waqf board staked claim on the land, and, in 2022, acting upon a directive from the board, the revenue department froze the owners’ revenue rights. Since then, the Munambam residents – a majority Catholics — have been on indefinite agitation demanding restoration of these rights. The matter is also pending before the Waqf tribunal in Kozhikode.The dispute at Munambam had hogged headlines during the debate over the Waqf Amendment Bill in the Parliament in April. The BJP – which seized on the issue as a means to get closer to the Christian vote bank in Kerala — rallied behind the occupants of the land: during a visit to Munambam after the Bill was passed, Union Minister of Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju said it had provisions to ensure that incidents like Munambam land row does not occur in the future.After the Parliament passed the Bill, 50-odd Christian families from Munambam had joined the BJP.