Delhi Confidential: Chance Meeting
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a five-nation tour, presented a replica of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, water from Saryu river as well as from the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj to his Trinidad & Tobago counterpart Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Friday. A day earlier, during his Ghana visit, he gifted a specially handcrafted pair of Bidriware flower vases from Karnataka to President John Mahama and a silver filigree purse from Cuttack to his spouse Lordina Mahama. The Ghana Vice President, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, received a Pashmina shawl from Kashmir.
The one-year term of the Lok Sabha House Committee headed by BJP MP Mahesh Sharma ended on Thursday. The panel of 12 MPs advises on residential allotment and guest accommodation for MPs. Neither a new panel has been constituted nor any extension given to the existing one. This may cause disarray ahead of the upcoming Parliament session this month. Also, 184 flats being constructed for parliamentarians at BKS Marg are likely to be ready by this month-end. The inauguration ceremony is proposed to be held in the first week of August.
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The Union government on Friday notified the rules that will operationalise the contentious Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, focussing largely on the functioning of the central portal where Islamic charitable endowments will be registered and leaving some finer details to the states. Muslims attend the 'Waqf Bachao - Dastur Bachao' conference at Gandhi Maidan in Patna, Bihar. (Santosh Kumar/HT photo) The 32-page document issued by the Union ministry of minority affairs is now set to be laid before Parliament during the upcoming monsoon session commencing July 21. HT first reported on June 20 that the rules would be published within 15 days. If Parliament makes any changes, the rules will be published in the gazette again, said a senior ministry official. 'The act in itself was quite elaborate so the rules have been kept short and to the point, mostly centering around the portal itself. Now the ministry's work is done and the rules will be laid in the upcoming Parliament session. The states have the biggest task now which is to make their own rules under the act,' said a senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The rules were framed under Section 108B, which was inserted into the 1995 Waqf Act by the amendments passed earlier this year and which allowed the Centre to make rules for waqf asset management system, registration, accounts, audit and other details of waqf, and the manner of payments for maintenance of widow, divorced woman and orphans. The Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development (UMEED) Rules, 2025 primarily operationalised the national UMEED portal launched last month, establishing a centralised digital database for Waqf properties supervised by the joint secretary of the ministry's waqf division. Key portal functions included filing detailed Waqf records, registering new Waqfs, maintaining electronic registers, submitting annual accounts, and auto-generating unique IDs for each Waqf and property. The rules establish a six-month deadline for uploading all existing Waqf properties onto the portal. State governments must publish surveyed lists of auqaf (plural of waqf) and upload them within 90 days of the rules' gazette publication, with possible 90-day extensions requiring stated reasons. 'Every mutawalli [custodian] shall enrol on the portal and database by using his mobile number and e-mail address through authentication by one time password received from the portal and database on the mobile and e-mail and thereafter be able to access the portal and database and file details of his waqf and property dedicated to the waqf,' the rules said. One of the most important provisions detailed in the new rules is about the registration of a new waqf. 'A waqf created after the commencement of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 shall make an application to the board for its registration under section 36 of the act within three months of its creation,' the rules said. The board, in this case, is the Central Waqf Board. The application for registration will have to be made on the portal and needs a description of the property, a copy of waqf deed, gross annual income, amount of land revenue, cesses, rates and taxes annually payable, estimate of the expenses, amount set aside for mutawalli, maintenance for widows, divorced women and orphans,and whether the property stood on protected or government land, among others. 'The collector shall inquire the genuineness and validity of the application and the particulars mentioned therein in accordance with the revenue laws…the collector shall submit the report to the board within a period of sixty days,' the rules said. This practically invalidates verbal waqf declarations, an age-old and controversial practice. It also effectively scraps the waqf-by-user provision – where a property is acknowledged as waqf because it has been used for religious activities for some time, despite there being no official declaration or registration as waqf – with prospective effect. The rules permit widows, divorced women, and orphans to apply for maintenance from dormant family waqfs (waqf-alal-aulad), requiring identity and residence proofs with payments made electronically. Waqf Boards must maintain electronic registers, publish audit reports online, and disclose board orders within 10 working days. Mutawallis must submit annual accounts electronically by October 1 each year, with the annual contribution to waqf boards capped at one crore rupees. An independent central agency will review the portal annually, and state governments must appoint nodal officers at the joint secretary level. 'On filing of the details of waqf and properties thereof by the mutawalli on the portal and database, the chief executive officer or any other officer duly authorised in writing by the board shall…certify the correctness of the information and particulars…within ten days,' the rules said. A waqf is a Muslim religious endowment, usually in the form of landed property, made for purposes of charity and community welfare. The contentious amendments to the central waqf law, which aims to make sweeping changes in the regulation and management of Islamic charitable endowments, was cleared by Parliament in April. The Supreme Court has reserved its judgment on a raft of petitions asking for a stay on some of the law's controversial provisions. Activists, opposition parties and bodies such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) challenged key provisions of the new law. The law accords more power to the government and allows for the appointment of non-Muslims and women to waqf boards, but the Opposition alleged it is unconstitutional. The rules mark a major landmark in operationalising the controversial law. But some experts raised concerns that the rules were silent on some of the more controversial provisions of the law – such as permitting women, Shia sects and government officials to be members of waqf bodies or allowing only a person 'showing or demonstrating that he is practising Islam for at least five years' to donate properties to waqf. They also said the conduct of the officials regulating or overseeing the registration process was undefined. Senior Advocate Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, who appeared before the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Waqf, pointed out gaps. Ayyubi expressed disappointment that the rules failed to define the qualifications, jurisdiction, or operational procedures for the 'designated officer' envisaged under the rules: 'I was expecting that they would indicate the qualifications or jurisdiction or area of the designated officers... how he will operate or something on that aspect. So that's something which is not there.' He also underlined that the rules were silent on how someone can fulfil the 'practising Muslim' clause. 'If there is any problem, then they can approach the court, but then everyone will start approaching the court because nothing is clear.'
