SRINAGAR: A year after the Union government claimed that India had more than 8.72 lakh immovable Waqf properties, new data, available after fresh registrations under the new Waqf Act that ended recently, shows hundreds of thousands of entries missing.
On December 9, 2024, Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju informed the Rajya Sabha that 872,352 immovable and 16,713 movable Waqf properties exist in the country, based on the government’s own Waqf Management System of India (WAMSI).
But a year later, when the mandatory registration deadline on the new UMEED portal expired on December 6, 2025, the ministry announced that only 517,040 properties. Of these, 216,905 were approved, 213,941 were still under review, and 10,869 had been rejected as invalid.
Even if every pending entry is eventually approved, nearly four lakh properties recorded earlier are missing from the new central database.
Steep Drop in J&K, Highest in UP
The mismatch is also glaring in Jammu and Kashmir, which reported 32,533 Waqf properties in December 2024 but uploaded only 25,293 entries on the UMEED portal this year, leaving 7,240 properties unaccounted for.
The Union Territory, which has a long-established Waqf structure and some of the country’s most valuable endowment land, now finds itself among the regions with the steepest drops.
Uttar Pradesh’s Sunni Waqf Board shows the largest fall, dropping from more than 2.17 lakh properties to just over 86,000 on UMEED.
Tamil Nadu, which earlier listed 66,000 properties, now shows barely 8,000. West Bengal’s tally fell from over 80,000 to 23,000, and Punjab plunged from nearly 76,000 to 25,910.
Kerala, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and both Waqf Boards in Uttar Pradesh show similarly significant falls, each losing thousands of recorded properties between the two systems.
Smaller states and union territories have also posted steep declines: Himachal Pradesh’s numbers shrank from 5,343 to 899, while Dadra and Nagar Haveli dropped from 30 to just 2.
Amid the widespread decline, a few states present the opposite trend.
Maharashtra shows a dramatic rise, jumping from 36,701 to 62,939 properties on UMEED. Both Shia and Sunni Waqf boards in Bihar have registered notable increases.
Delhi’s count has risen as well, as has that of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
These inconsistencies have added a further layer of confusion to an already disputed dataset, indicating that different states may have followed different practices of verification, documentation, or migration to the new portal.
Concern over Missing Properties
The scale of the national shortfall, 355,312 missing properties, has sparked concern among Waqf boards, community leaders, and legal experts.
Waqf land is one of the largest community-owned endowment systems in India, supporting mosques, dargahs, graveyards, schools, hospitals, and a wide range of welfare institutions.
When large numbers of properties disappear from digitised official records, the consequences touch everything from property protection and encroachment disputes to court cases, redevelopment plans, and long-term financial sustainability.
Experts say the discrepancy between the WAMSI figures placed before Parliament and the UMEED numbers released a year later has raised difficult questions about the accuracy of old records, the criteria applied by the new system, and the government’s handling of the transition.
Some state boards argue that the UMEED portal rejected entries due to missing coordinates, incomplete documentation, or outdated revenue descriptions that did not conform to current formats.
Others suggest that the earlier WAMSI database may have included unverified or duplicated entries that did not withstand the scrutiny of the new system.
A Waqf Mutawali from Madhya Pradesh has also petitioned the Supreme Court against alleged discrepancies and has prayed for rectification of the flaws.
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