Punjab set to meet UMEED deadline with over 95% Waqf data uploaded

A team of nearly 130 officers worked relentlessly to ensure that the state remained among the top performers nationally. For the past two to three weeks, employees have been working round-the-clock, often through the night, to meet the deadline, Punjab Waqf Board officials said.

The UMEED portal was launched by the Ministry of Minority Affairs on June 6 to create a nationwide, geo-tagged digital inventory of all registered Waqf properties under the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025. As per the mandate, details of all Waqf properties had to be uploaded within six months of the launch.

Sources from the Punjab Waqf Board confirmed that over 95 per cent of the work has been completed, despite repeated disruptions in the system. “The figures are likely to improve further by tomorrow. In case any entries remain pending because of portal glitches, the officials can approach the Waqf Tribunal, which has the legal authority to grant extension,” sources from the minority affairs ministry said.

The uploading process follows a three-tier verification system involving a ‘maker, checker and approver’. The maker, usually a mutawalli or authorised representative, uploads all property details, documents and geo-tagging. The checker, a district-level official, verifies the data, after which the final approval is granted by a senior state-level authority.

Estate officers described the working conditions as extremely challenging over the last fortnight. “For most of the last week, the portal remained extremely slow or inaccessible. Some critical features were disabled at times. Documents uploaded were not opening, making verification difficult. Even corrections in rejected cases were not functioning properly at times. Despite all this, the staff worked overnight to complete the task,” a senior estate officer said.

Focus on estates

Unlike many states that focused on uploading individual Waqf properties, Punjab uploaded details of Waqf estates, which are reflected as Waqf properties on the portal. According to the Board, properties are a subset of estates, and one estate may consist of multiple properties. As per official records, Punjab alone has over 75,000 individual Waqf properties spread across different districts.

Explaining this approach, Showkat Ahmad Parray, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Punjab Waqf Board, said, “Estate is the main property that was surveyed and notified. It has a separate notification and revenue record. Property is not an independent entity. It is a part of the estate itself. It doesn’t have a separate record (notification, gazette, survey, etc). If you prove a property as falling within the Waqf estate, that is sufficient to prove it is Waqf nature. Also, Waqf estates are almost frozen, while properties are not. The number of Waqf properties in an estate changes over time.”

Hoshiarpur is in the lead

District-wise progress shows Hoshiarpur leading the state with the maximum number of Waqf estates. As of December 5, a total of 3,427 estates were initiated in Hoshiarpur, of which 3,393 have already been approved. Gurdaspur stands second, with 2,804 approvals out of 2,883 initiated cases. In Amritsar, 2,463 estates have been approved out of 2,498 initiated, while Jalandhar reported 2,172 approvals out of 2,310 estates. Ludhiana, placed at number five, has seen 1,695 approvals out of 1,864 initiated cases.

Kapurthala follows with 1,669 approvals out of 1,768 initiated estates, while in Patiala, 1,647 out of 1,670 estates have been approved. Tarn Taran recorded 1,303 approvals out of 1,311 estates, Ferozepur saw 972 approvals out of 1,046, and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar reported 755 approvals out of 757 estates.

Interestingly, Malerkotla, which has the highest Muslim population in the state, reported fewer estates because of its smaller geographical size. There, 530 out of 564 estates have been approved. In Sangrur, from which Malerkotla was carved out in 2020, 624 out of 727 estates have been approved.

Officials acknowledged that several estates could not be approved due to technical snags or other issues, but assured that these would be re-uploaded.