KOZHIKODE: Amid demands from certain corners that Kerala State Waqf Board be dissolved, chairman K S Hamsa asserted that no such dissolution is possible as there is a statutory tenure for the board.
It may be recalled that some organisations have raised the demand that the government should dissolve the board after it entered the details of the 404 acres of land at Munambam in the Umeed portal set up by the Union government for the entry of waqf properties in the country.
“Five years is the statutory term fixed for the present board. So, it is not an easy task for the government to dissolve it. It is true that the government can go for some drastic action, something similar to the dissolution of an elected government by the President, but it is not easy,” Hamsa told TNIE.
The land at Munambam was entered into the waqf register in 2019 when Panakkad Syed Rasheed Ali Shihab Thangal was the chairman of the Board, he said. “We only fulfilled the mandatory provision of uploading the details of the Munambam land in the portal before the stipulated time, which is May 17. And it is not confined to the Munambam property alone; we included around 59,000 properties in the portal,” Hamsa said.
He said there are other properties like the one at Munambam which are entangled in legal issues. “We cannot omit them from the portal only because they are under judicial consideration. The waqf status of these properties will be finally decided by the competent courts,’ Hamsa said.
According to Hamsa, the land at Munambam is currently treated as a waqf property as per the latest order by the Supreme Court. “As far as I know no one has filed a review petition against the order.”
Hamsa said the people residing at Munambam are victims of treachery. “We don’t consider them our enemy. Any discussion on the solution for the present crisis is possible only after acknowledging Munambam is a waqf property. I don’t know why the chief minister made the comments against the Board.”