Delay In Registering Of Waqf Properties On Umeed Portal, Organizations Seek Extension Of Deadline

Dehradun: Registration of Waqf Board properties on the online Umeed portal is proving to be a tedious task with multiple obstacles leading to a delay.

In Uttarakhand, only a little more than 24% of Waqf properties could be registered on the portal till Friday, when the deadline was to expire. This led to the authorities granting another day’s relaxation. But it is highly unlikely that the entire Waqf properties can be uploaded during this time.

Investigating the matter, the ETV Bharat team found a plethora of factors delaying the registration process. The team visited a centre in Dehradun’s Azad Colony where several Muslim organizations were carrying out the process of registering Waqf properties online.

Mustaqeem, who has been helping people from various parts of the state register in the process, pointed out, “The Umeed portal is experiencing technical issues. The website's server has been running very slowly. We are helping all Waqf users in and around us get their properties registered online and have already registered over 100 Waqf properties.”

Mohammad Mudassir, who is the Mutawalli of Waqf property worth more than Rs 1 crore in the middle of Dehradun’s Paltan Bazaar, claimed that the Waqf Board has all the records with it. “However, all this data is available offline. The issue of tampering with this data has also surfaced many times,” he said while pointing out that it is the Waqf Board's responsibility to register the correct answers online and cross-check them. He said Mutawalli is asked to perform this task for which he is not paid.
Agreeing with the exercise, he said, “ There must be transparency and the land should not be misused. Although people are facing some difficulties, once it goes online, there will be proper monitoring and trespassing on these properties will be reduced. Furthermore, those who have previously misused Waqf land will also be exposed.”

He said that the Waqf land in the heart of Dehradun city needs to be taken care of, as encroachers and land mafia have been eying it.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Shah Nazar, who is the spokesperson of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, said that before the Umeed portal, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had registered Waqf properties on the Vamsi portal.

“The Indian government hired several IT experts for this portal. They were sent to the states and tasked with satellite mapping of all Waqf properties across the country and uploading them to the site. This process began in 2011 and continued until 2017. During this period, more than a quarter of Uttarakhand's Waqf properties were uploaded to this portal,” he said while pointing out that the central government deactivated this portal in 2017 because it was developed by an outsourced agency. The Umeed portal was launched in 2025 after amending the Waqf Bill. The new amendment stipulated that the data registered on the previous portal be considered null and void.

Nazar said that the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind has set up camps in Dehradun, Roorkee and Haridwar to upload property records online.

When the Umeed portal was launched, the Muslim Personal Law Board and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind were fighting against the Waqf Amendment Bill and the portal in the Supreme Court. He said that the Court incorporated the points mentioned by these organizations, and his organization subsequently supported the exercise.

Nazar pointed out that since a significant portion of Waqf properties in Uttarakhand and the entire country have not yet been registered online, he has been continuously urging the central government and the Minority Welfare Minister to extend the deadline.

He said that if the government wants to protect Waqf properties, the timeframe for the Umeed portal should be extended, and the proposed tribunal should be established in Uttarakhand as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the Uttarakhand Waqf Board Chairman, Shadab Shams, has blamed the Muslim organizations that initially opposed the Umeed portal for the delay in registrations. “When the six-month deadline was given, various Muslim and political organizations initially tried to stall and disrupt the process. Then, if we wanted all properties to be online in the last one and a half months, how is that possible? We have requested Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju to extend the deadline for the Umeed portal so that all the properties can be registered online. If the deadline is extended, it will become clear who is eyeing Waqf Board properties and who honestly wants to register their properties online. Currently, there has been a one-day extension. We demand that this be extended further,” he said.

Shams further stated that another option for registering Waqf Board properties online is through the tribunal, whose officers are yet to be appointed.