On April 5, India President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025. The new law, which has been renamed the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act, or UMEED (literally, “hope”), changes the composition of waqf boards and how waqf properties will be managed.
The Waqf Bill was the subject of heated debates in parliament over the past eight months, and its recent enactment has triggered massive protests in several Indian cities. Several opposition parties, Muslim bodies, and rights organizations have also filed petitions in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of the new law.
Waqf properties are charitable endowments that Muslims have made for centuries for religious or charitable purposes for the benefit of the community. Such properties include graveyards, mosques, educational institutions, shelter homes, orphanages, and shrines.
According to government data, there are around 872,351 immovable waqf properties across the country with an estimated total value of $14.22 billion. Waqf boards, which manage these properties, are “the third largest land owner in India, following the Armed Forces and the Indian Railways.”
The Waqf Act, passed in 1995 and amended in 2013, established the legal framework for managing waqf properties. Thirty-two more or less autonomous state waqf boards were empowered to designate properties as waqf and manage them, while waqf tribunals were mandated with settling disputes.
The new law makes sweeping changes to the composition and authority of the waqf boards. It allows Muslim women and two non-Muslims to be members of these boards. It dilutes the autonomy and authority of waqf boards and takes away their power to decide whether a property is waqf or not.
“The power of managing waqfs, which was hitherto in the hands of waqf boards and tribunals that were largely run by the Muslim community, has shifted to state governments,” an Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) professor told The Diplomat.
According to the professor, the new law “enables the government to gain control over waqf properties,” as it is the “government-appointed district collector who is now empowered to determine whether a property is waqf and also be the final arbiter in disputes.”
BJP leaders have sought to justify the UMEED Act by claiming that it will improve the efficiency of the administration of waqf properties, and make their management transparent. Describing it as “inclusive” legislation, they say it empowers Muslim women and protects the rights of all Muslim sects.
“This is an old ploy of the BJP, which has in the past enacted legislation relating to Muslim affairs by claiming it was doing so to protect Muslim women,” the professor said.
This was the case, for example, with the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which BJP leaders said would save Muslim women from the “sword” of “triple talaq” (or instant divorce) hanging over them.
A Muslim social activist welcomed the new law’s inclusion of women and non-Muslims in the waqf board. However, it isn’t “commitment to diversity that brought this reform,” she said. “If the BJP government is indeed serious about diversity, it should introduce similar changes in Hindu temple boards as well,” she said. She pointed out that “if the government ensured representation of non-Hindus and Dalit Hindus in temple boards, Muslims would be more willing to accept” the new law.
Opposition parties, Muslim groups, and secular Indians have raised objections to the new law. Since 2014, when the BJP came to power, it has enacted a slew of legislations like the Uniform Civil Code and pursued policies that disempower Muslims and undermine their way of life. In this context, the UMEED Act is seen to be the latest move by the BJP to marginalize Muslims.
Opposition parties have also claimed that the new law violates the Indian Constitution, which, among other things, guarantees religious groups equality in the eyes of the law and confers on them the right to manage their own affairs.
Opposition leaders have also pointed out that the BJP government bulldozed the bill through parliament. When the Waqf Bill was first tabled in parliament in August last year, the government – in a show of being consultative – sent it to a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) for further discussion. However, only those changes suggested by JPC members of the BJP and its allies were included in the bill’s final version. Dissenting notes from opposition MPs were redacted without their consent.
While some Muslim intellectuals and community leaders admit that the administration of waqf properties has been plagued by corruption and inefficiency, they are skeptical that the new law will be successful in tackling this. “Adding government officials to waqf boards is not going to reduce corruption. At best, it will shift corruption from the Muslim waqf board members to government officials in the board,” the AMU professor said. Muslims fear that the new law will “enable the government to legally seize and destroy waqf properties.”
There is a perception that the new law is not just about Muslims and their properties. There are apprehensions that its impact will be felt beyond the Muslim community, and its implications are far from simple or straightforward.
Among those who celebrated the new law were 600 families in Munambam village in the southern state of Kerala. Since last year, these families – many of them Catholics – have been protesting the Kerala Waqf Board’s declaration of a 400-acre area of their land as waqf property. They hope to benefit from the new law.
But it may be too early for these Catholic families to celebrate.
An article titled “Who has more land in India? The Catholic Church vs Waqf Board debate,” published in Organiser, the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological fount, claims that the Catholic Church (and not the Waqf Board) is the largest non-government holder of land in India.
According to The Telegraph, which reported on the Organiser article – it has been pulled down from the Organiser website since – said that the article “obliquely sought to draw the Narendra Modi government’s attention towards the land held by the Catholic Church,” and “appeared to be setting the agenda” for legislation similar to the Waqf Act but “aimed at the Catholic Church.”
The RSS-BJP have a long history of targeting not just Muslims but also Christians for their conversion activities. Such targeting has included violent attacks and laws to restrict religious conversion.
Soon after The Telegraph report was published, Leader of the Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi warned India’s religious minorities of what could lie ahead. In a post on X, Gandhi wrote that while “the Waqf Bill attacks Muslims now,” it “sets a precedent to target other communities in the future.”
The BJP government has gained a foothold in properties held for centuries by the Muslim community. The properties of other religious groups could be in peril as well.
