Nearly four months after the Centre launched UMEED portal – a centralised digital platform for real-time uploading, verification, and monitoring of Waqf properties – only around 4,000 properties have been registered so far compared to the total 8.72 lakh Waqf establishments spread across 30 States/UTs, covering more than 38 lakh acres of land.
While Waqf Board officials from several States have complained about legal and technical issues on the portal, an official from the Ministry of Minority Affairs attributed the sluggish registrations to the absence of “fool-proof records”, making it ‘impossible’ to fill the required data before the six-month registration deadline in December.
In States such as Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Haryana and Maharashtra, Waqf officials said the portal throws up errors at every stage of registration — from missing city, area or ward names to repeated admin login failures. The lack of an ‘auto-save’ feature has also slowed progress, forcing users to restart the entire process each time they log in.
A Waqf official from Uttar Pradesh alleged that the system demanded old revenue records, which even the Revenue Department officials are unable to find, given that some are over a century-old. U.P. has over 2.3 lakh properties under Shia and Sunni Waqfs boards – the highest in the country.
Giving an example, another official said the UMEED portal sought the date of a survey conducted nearly 80 years ago on a graveyard in Lucknow. “The burial site was waqf by use, but there is no way to supply such details today,” he noted. Another Waqf official from U.P. said that the old revenue records are a mix of Persian and Arabic language.
“Even if we manage to get documents rotting in government departments, there is no one to read them,” he said adding that during the meeting of Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) meeting of the Waqf Amendment Bill, all these issues were raised and the government was asked to push the deadline for registration by at least two years, but the Centre fixed a six-month period starting from June 6.
Boundary details a hurdle
A Waqf Board member from Haryana highlighted another problem: providing precise boundary details. In many cases, a person dedicates only a share of land as waqf, while other portions remain under different co-owners.
“If a person has dedicated his share of property, which is in the middle of a larger piece of land co-owned by others, as waqf, how can boundaries be clearly defined? But without this, the property cannot be registered,” the official added.
Akramul Jabbar Khan, a former Indian Revenue Service officer who now manages the Alamgir Masjid, a 46-acre waqf property in Pune’s Kondhwa area, said that nobody appears to have studied the mechanics of how things are handled by the Waqf Board, altogether ignoring the specific legal provisions of the Waqf Act while making UMEED portal.
“The portal is built in hurry with no deliberations and discussions with Waqf Boards,” he said.
Government response
Speaking to The Hindu, Minority Affairs Secretary Chandra Shekhar Kumar said that the government is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring full transparency and ease in uploading data.
Responding to the complaints, the official said that a dedicated technical team is working to address every issue raised within 24 hours. He added that most of the issues raised by Waqf officials were already solved. The Ministry, he added, is conducting workshops with Waqf Boards, State governments, and other stakeholders to familiarise them with the amended Act and the new portal.
The Secretary pointed out that the earlier WAMSI portal lacked proper verification mechanisms leading to missing addresses or properties recorded with zero land area. The UMEED portal, by contrast, follows a statutory three-tier Maker-Checker-Approver process.
When asked that if several properties have been marked as zero area, the official said that once the entries are verified, the final overall waqf landholding will be less but the scale of shortfall cannot be estimated with such limited registrations.
Scale of waqf holdings
It is said that waqf holdings, currently estimated at 38–39 lakh acres, account for nearly 5% of the country’s total land area — more than the combined landholdings of the Defence Ministry and Indian Railways.
Reacting to the Ministry’s remark about properties marked with zero area, a Waqf Board official countered that there is an “unnecessary hype” aimed at portraying Muslims as the country’s largest landowners.
Published – September 29, 2025 10:12 pm IST
