India’s Supreme Court recently announced it would consider a vital application submitted by AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. The plea seeks an additional six months for the nationwide registration of waqf properties through the government’s UMEED portal.
According to the recently enacted Section 3B(1) of the 2025 Waqf Amendment Act, all waqf properties registered before this amendment must submit their details to the UMEED portal and its associated database within a six-month window. This same six-month period is also outlined in Section 36(1) and Section 36(10) of the original 1995 Waqf Act.
A critical new clause, Section 36(10), introduced by the 2025 Amendment, states that no legal action—including suits or appeals—can be initiated, heard, or decided by any court on behalf of an unregistered waqf. This effectively means that any waqf failing to register by the deadline will be entirely stripped of its legal recourse and protection.
The application, filed by advocates Nizam Pasha and Lzafeer Ahmad, warns that this crucial six-month period is due to expire soon. After this deadline, countless unregistered waqfs—regardless of their historical existence and established recognition—will lose all legal remedies. This could plunge their future into severe uncertainty and expose them to arbitrary judicial decisions.
The plea highlights that a significant portion of the initial six-month registration window was consumed while the Supreme Court deliberated on a previous petition to stay the 2025 Act. In its judgment delivered on September 15, the Apex Court opted for a balanced approach, temporarily halting sections of the 2025 Waqf (Amendment) Act deemed ‘prima facie arbitrary,’ yet declining to completely freeze the entire legislation.
The current application stresses that while the Supreme Court’s previous judgment addressed other interim reliefs, it did not account for the approaching expiry of the statutory deadline under Section 36(10). The applicant’s objective is to alert the court to this critical oversight, hoping for appropriate relief that would prevent waqfs nationwide from losing their protections and remedies under the Waqf Act, simply because they weren’t given a genuine chance to register. This oversight presents an immediate and irreversible risk of harm to every unregistered waqf across the country.