Upload all waqf data by Centre’s Dec 5 deadline, Bengal govt tells DMs
Times of India | 28 November 2025
Kolkata: Bengal govt on Thursday asked all district magistrates to stick to Centre's Dec 5 deadline to upload all 82,000 waqf properties across 8,000 waqf estates on the UMEED portal.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has opposed the amended waqf act, now renamed as Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development (UMEED) Act, 1995. Multiple petitions had been filed in the Supreme Court against the act.
The Supreme Court on Sept 15 stayed certain provisions of the act, but of the rules allowed by the apex court was section 3B of the act, which asked all ‘mutawallis' (waqf property managers) to upload the data of all registered waqf properties on the central portal by Dec 5.
With the deadline nearing, the Bengal govt has now asked all distric magistrates to ask ‘mutawallis' to comply with the deadline.
A senior Bengal officer said, "Information on all the 82,000 waqf properties in Bengal are available with Centre. The new act mandates it has to be uploaded in a specific format on the UMEED portal. This is being complied with. Some districts have already uploaded their details; the others will comply soon."
The Bengal Waqf Board has already introduced helplines and a WhatsApp number to help ‘mutawallis' upload the data. An officer said that the Board was also holding "doubt-clearing sessions" every Tuesday and Friday at its Madan Street headquarters in Kolkata.
Trinamool had opposed the act in Parliament, and also in the Parliamentary Standing Committee formed to examine the bill.
The party is of the opinion that the amended act takes away from Muslims their fundamental right to religious and personal freedom, and also encroaches upon the state's legislative domain.
After the bill was passed in April, the Bengal chief minister had said that the act would be revoked when an INDIA bloc would come to office at the Centre.