New Delhi : The Union government on Friday announced that it would not impose penalties or take action against custodians registering waqf properties on the UMEED portal for the next three months after the deadline ends on Saturday, reported ANI.
The statement came amid concerns about low registrations on the portal, which has seen slow progress due to technical glitches that caused repeated crashes and difficulties faced by custodians in locating documents for centuries-old properties, The Indian Express reported.
Union Minister of Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju said that custodians who are unable to complete the registration process should approach the Waqf Tribunal, ANI reported. He added that while the Centre would provide “maximum relief”, it remained bound by the law.
The 2025 Waqf Amendment Act, passed in April, requires custodians of waqf properties to register records on the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development portal.
The portal was developed by the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs to create a digital inventory of waqf properties by geo-tagging them.
A waqf is an endowment under Islamic law dedicated to a religious, educational or charitable cause. Each state has a waqf board led by a legal entity vested with the power to acquire, hold and transfer property.
The UMEED portal was operationalised on June 6 and the rules under the Act were framed on July 3. The custodians of waqf properties had only six months to register the details on the portal.
On Friday, The Indian Express reported that only a small fraction of properties across four of the five states with the largest shares of waqf land had been registered on the portal.
The states are Uttar Pradesh, which has 1.4 lakh waqf properties, followed by West Bengal (80,480), Punjab (75,511), Tamil Nadu (66,092) and Karnataka (65,242). There are an estimated 8.8 lakh waqf properties in the country, according to the newspaper.
Among the five states, only 35% of properties had been registered on UMEED till Thursday.
In West Bengal, 12% of the properties had been registered till Monday night. The figure was 10% each in Karnataka till Tuesday and Tamil Nadu till Wednesday, reported The Indian Express.
In Punjab, 80% of the properties had been registered till Wednesday.
Against this backdrop, several political parties and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board moved the Supreme Court seeking an extension of the deadline for registering waqf properties.The court, however, refused to grant the request, stating that petitioners could approach the Waqf Tribunal. Section 3B of the Waqf Act gives the tribunal the power to extend the time limit, it noted.
On Monday, advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the petitioners, had contended that the time provided to register the properties was “very less” because not all details were available.
“We do not know who the waqif [who creates the endowment] is for waqfs of 100, 125 years old,” Sibal had said. “Without these details, the portal won’t accept.”
On Thursday, Opposition MPs met Rijiju, seeking a six-month extension of the deadline.
Following the meeting, Congress MP Syed Naseer Hussain said in a social media post that the Opposition delegation had conveyed to the minister that the compliance period for registering properties had “effectively been much shorter” as “clarity on key provisions came only after the Supreme Court’s interim order in mid‑September”.
On September 15, the Supreme Court stayed several provisions of the Act but said that no case had been made to stay the entire amendment.
The court had also declined to stay the requirement for all waqfs to be registered, saying that the requirement existed before the amendment.
Hussain said on Thursday that the Opposition had pointed out that several waqf properties are in rural areas and their custodians are elderly or not digitally trained, “yet the portal still demands precise area, boundary and historical title details that are often unavailable for century‑old waqfs, making it impossible to complete mandatory fields”.
“The minister responded positively and assured us that he would instruct the concerned officers to take necessary steps so that genuine waqf properties and mutawallis are protected,” added the MP.
