The pretentious nomenclature of UMEED, the ironic acronym for the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development Act—the title of the new waqf law—can’t camouflage its brazen discrimination against Muslims and encouragement for usurping their common properties. This is most eloquently exemplified by the UMEED Act denying Muslims an assured majority on the state waqf boards, which superintend moveable and immoveable properties that Muslims gift to God in perpetuity for religious and charitable purposes.

The UMEED Act explicitly says that only four of the waqf board’s 11 members have to be Muslim—a representative of mutawallis or managers of the waqf, an eminent scholar of Islamic theology, and two or more elected members from the municipalities or panchayats. The board’s other seven members can be non-Muslim. The objections of Muslim members in a board meeting can, thus, be routinely overruled.