Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Friday observed that the litigants who had moved the court challenging the state government’s decision to appoint an inquiry commission in the Munambam land dispute were “masquerading” for other interested parties with ulterior motives. The observation came as the division bench allowed two appeals filed by the State Government against the single bench’s March 17 order, which had quashed the appointment of the Inquiry Commission set up to resolve the dispute between residents of Munambam and the Waqf Board.

Residents of Munambam have long been protesting as they are unable to pay land tax or obtain property mutations from the Kuzhupilly Village Office due to claims that the lands are registered as Waqf property. Over 6,000 families reportedly face eviction from the disputed area. The central question in the dispute is whether Siddhique Sait—who gifted the land to Farook College in 1950—intended the property to be a Waqf endowment.

A division bench comprising Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice Syam Kumar VM examined the matter, particularly the locus standi of the petitioners—Kerala Waqf Samrakshana Vedhi and other connected parties—to maintain their plea.

The bench noted:
“The learned Single Judge held that the writ petitioners would fall within the periphery of ‘person aggrieved’, making the writ petition itself maintainable before the Single Bench. We fail to fall in line with the said view for the reason that the writ petitioners have failed to sufficiently plead and demonstrate how they are directly affected by the issuance of the IC (inquiry commission) and the decision of the State Government of inquiring into the plight of bona fide occupants and third-party purchasers of various properties in the subject property. Why the writ petitioners preferred to file the writ petition as a ‘person aggrieved’ and not as a PIL is a lurking question not having been answered till the final hearing before this Court.”

The court said it would have been a different matter if the Mutawalli (manager) of the disputed property had approached the court seeking enforcement of the Waqf Act, but that was not the case.

It noted that while the petitioners claimed to be “public-spirited citizens” with an interest in preserving the waqf character of the land, they failed to explain why they “slept till 2019” when third-party rights were being created.

The bench further observed that from 1950 to 2019, neither the petitioners nor any similarly placed party had moved the court for directions to register the property as waqf.

“The filing of the writ petition by the writ petitioner raises more questions than it can answer, fundamentally because they are projecting themselves as ‘person aggrieved’,” the court said, referring to several earlier rulings that define who qualifies as an “aggrieved person.”

The court also noted that the fifth respondent, Farook College Management—transferees of the 1950 endowment deed—had consistently maintained that the document was a simple gift deed and not a waqf deed, vehemently opposing the petitioners’ plea.

“Holding the writ petitioners to be ‘person aggrieved’ would also be doing injustice to the actual entities who may be the ‘person aggrieved’ like the Farooq Management or the third-party bona fide occupants who are affected by the declaration of subject property as a waqf property,” the bench said.

It added that even the Kerala Waqf Board had not challenged the legality of the state’s move to form the inquiry commission.

“Therefore, in the humble opinion of this Court, clearly the original writ petitioners can be treated as masquerading the interests of certain other interested parties, who are undertaking the present proceedings as a proxy litigation for certain ulterior purposes,” the bench remarked.

The judges expressed surprise that “outsiders and busybodies” like the original petitioners had filed the case asserting that the property was waqf land, while the actual transferee—Farooq Management—had consistently argued otherwise.

“There are reasons far more than what meets our eyes, which are perceivable during the course of hearing, that the Other Writ Petitions are entities set up by some invisible third party to somehow wrest the entire property and land from the Farook College Management in the name of having been declared as a waqf,” the court added.

Consequently, the court ruled that the petitioners before the single bench lacked locus standi as they were not “persons aggrieved,” and upheld the government’s decision to form the Inquiry Commission.

(With Live Law inputs)