As the December 5 deadline for registering Waqf properties on the Umeed portal approached, reports suggested that only a fraction of records had been uploaded due to a combination of technical failures and administrative hurdles; however, Union minority affairs minister Kiren Rijiju assured stakeholders that no strict action would be taken for the next three months despite widespread requests for an extension.
The portal, launched by the Union government on June 6 under the Waqf (Amendment) Act as a centralised digital repository with geo-tagging and documentation, was intended to enhance transparency and oversight of the 8.7 lakh listed properties spread across 9.4 lakh acres, yet its performance has remained inconsistent, The Wire reported.
Major Waqf boards across the country struggled to complete their uploads as the system repeatedly crashed, and users found it difficult to locate documents related to century-old endowments, while many mutawallis lacked adequate digital training and were confronted with varying land-measurement systems across states.
The challenges were compounded by errors during login, deletion of partially entered data and slow loading speeds, causing delays at a time when the Supreme Court bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and A. G. Masih had refused requests to extend the statutory six-month registration window, noting that the Act already provided a mechanism to seek more time from the Waqf Tribunal.
State-wise progress remained uneven, since Uttar Pradesh, which has the largest number of properties across its Sunni and Shia boards, had uploaded only about a third of its records, while West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were able to complete between 10% and 12% of their entries by early this week.
Punjab emerged as an outlier as it had uploaded close to 80% of its data, and officials attributed this comparatively smoother progress to the state’s practice of registering estates rather than individual properties, which simplified the process in the absence of mutawallis.
Political leaders continued to raise concerns as the deadline drew near, and Congress MP Naseer Hussain, NCP MP Fauzia Khan and Kishanganj MP Mohammed Jawaid collectively highlighted the difficulty rural and elderly mutawallis faced in gathering precise boundary and historic title details demanded by the portal.
They also pointed out that the effective compliance period had been shorter than intended because the Act came into force on 8 April, the portal became operational only on 6 June, and the rules were notified on 3 July, while further clarity emerged only after an interim Supreme Court order in September, thereby compressing the workable timeline.