Bengaluru: The Congress government in Karnataka is weighing a decision on whether to upload details of all unencumbered Waqf properties to the Union government’s newly launched UMEED (Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development) portal, developed under the controversial Waqf (Amendment) Act.
The Act mandates a centralised portal for real-time uploading, verification, and monitoring of Waqf properties. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s administration had earlier opposed the Bill, even passing a resolution against it in the Assembly in March.
However, on Thursday, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda and Waqf Minister B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan held discussions on uploading property details.
“A direction has come from the Union government on making entries of Waqf properties in the centralised portal. This will be examined. We have asked the Revenue and Minority Welfare secretaries to discuss it,” Gowda said.
Sources said Khan urged Gowda to instruct revenue officials to facilitate uploading. “The State government feels there’s no harm in uploading details of legally clear Waqf properties,” a source added.
Karnataka has 48,148 Waqf properties, including mosques, madrasas, khabrastans, Idgahs, Dargahs, and Ashoorkhanas. The Board faces 4,173 cases of encroachment, spanning 12,458 acres and 2.39 crore sq ft. So far, only 185 cases of encroachment have been cleared, recovering 371 acres.
In December 2024, Minister Khan told the Assembly that the State Waqf Board once held 1.28 lakh acres, but only 36,000 acres remain today. Large chunks were lost to the Karnataka Inam Abolition Act (47,263 acres), the Karnataka Land Reforms Act (23,620 acres), government acquisitions (3,000 acres), and private encroachments (17,969 acres) — with 95% of usurpers being Muslims themselves.
The BJP, which had launched a sharp campaign during the Waqf (Amendment) Bill debate, had accused the Congress government of allowing farmlands to be wrongly marked as Waqf property.
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