The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a petition filed by a waqf mutawalli who alleged technical and structural deficiencies in the Centre’s UMEED portal, which has been made mandatory for uploading details of waqf properties across the country.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi dismissed the plea after observing that the issues raised were administrative in nature and did not warrant the court’s intervention at this stage.

However, the bench granted liberty to the petitioner, Hashmat Ali, to approach the appropriate authorities for redressal.

“We see no ground to entertain this writ petition. The petitioner may be well advised to approach the prescribed authority for clarification or addressing of grievances for which liberty is granted,” the CJI said in the order.

At the outset, the Chief Justice questioned why the petition had been filed directly before the Supreme Court instead of a high court. “Why did you not approach the high court?” the CJI asked.

Senior advocate Maneka Guruswamy, appearing for Ali, told the bench that the high court was unlikely to take up the matter since challenges to the 2025 amendments to the Waqf law were already pending before the Supreme Court.

The court, however, was not convinced. The Chief Justice pointed out that the present petition did not raise any substantive constitutional challenge to the amendments.

Instead, it focused on difficulties in using the UMEED portal, which the bench described as “administrative difficulties”. Such issues, the court said, could be addressed either by the high court or by the authorities concerned.

During the hearing, Guruswamy said the petition went beyond technical glitches and also raised concerns about how waqfs were being classified under the Waqf Rules, 2025.

She argued that the category of ‘Waqf by survey’ had been subsumed under ‘Waqf by user’, and that the UMEED portal did not offer a separate option for ‘Waqf by survey’ in its drop-down menu.

Justice Bagchi responded by noting that the ministry had already clarified that ‘Waqf by survey’ stood subsumed within the ‘Waqf by user’ category.

Ali, a mutawalli from Madhya Pradesh, had challenged the enforceability of the digital uploading mandate under Section 3B of the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development Act, 1995.

He alleged that the UMEED portal, notified under the UMEED Rules, 2025, was structurally defective and technologically unfit for registering waqf properties.

The petition also referred to an earlier order of the Supreme Court. On December 1 last year, the court had refused to extend the deadline for mandatory registration of all waqf properties, including ‘waqf by user’, on the UMEED portal.

The Centre launched the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development (UMEED) Act central portal on June 6 with the stated aim of creating a digital inventory of waqf properties after geo-tagging them.

As per the mandate, details of all registered waqf properties across India are required to be uploaded on the portal within six months.

With Friday’s order, the Supreme Court has made it clear that grievances related to the functioning of the UMEED portal must first be taken up with the authorities or before the appropriate high court, rather than being brought directly to the top court.