The Kerala Wakf Board has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking an additional four-month extension to upload data for 25,000 waqf properties, in addition to the 40,000 already registered, onto the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development (UMEED) portal.
This submission was made after the deadline of December 6, 2025, and the five-month extension granted for entering information on all waqf properties had expired.
The bench, comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and judges Joymalya Bagchi and Vi Mohana, requested a response from the Union government. Previously, on December 1 of last year, the coordinating bench of judges Dipankar Datta and A G Masih had denied the request for an extension until December 6, 2025, for uploading data on properties registered in the name of waqfs to the UMEED portal, submitted by Kapil Sibal, A M Singhvi, and Mohd Nizamuddin Pasha.
Judges Datta and Masih advised the petitioners to approach tribunals for an extension of time. The Kerala State Wakf Board received a five-month extension from the tribunal, which expired on May 17.
The Board stated that there are approximately 13,000 waqf institutions and over 60,000 waqf properties in Kerala. Despite ongoing technical issues, the Board reported significant progress in data uploading. More than 40,000 properties have already been verified and approved, while about 25,000 properties are still awaiting verification and approval.
According to data provided to the Centre for the Supreme Court, which dismissed the temporary stay on the implementation of the Waqf Amendment Act 2025, the Kerala State Wakf Board possesses 53,282 properties covering an area of 36,167 acres. Nationally in India, there are 872,870 waqf properties with a total area of 39 lakh acres, more than twice the size of Sikkim.
The Centre informed the Supreme Court that the 2013 decision to remove a provision from the Waqf Act 1995, which restricted enforcement against unregistered waqfs, led to a sharp increase in the number of waqf properties in boards from 207,394 to 872,870, along with a corresponding increase in area from 18.3 lakh acres to 39 lakh acres.
The Kerala State Wakf Board emphasized that although the Waqf Amendment Act came into force on April 8, 2025, the UMEED portal only started functioning on June 6, 2025. The Board noted that the legislative objective of this provision is to create a centralized digital repository for all registered Awqafs by the central government. It clarified that this provision is regulatory and facilitative, not punitive, and requested the Supreme Court to grant it another four months to complete the data upload for the remaining 25,000 waqf properties onto the portal.