On Tuesday, the Centre has been asked for statistics of 65 years old people who are consecutively applying for visit the Haj pilgrimage but are getting rejected from past 5 years due to the decision drawn by lots, says Supreme Court.
The constitutional bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra was explained in detail about the new Haj policy by Pinky Anand, the additional solicitor. The policy stated that in an attempt to show the flaws in the allocation of the permission to commence subsidized Haj pilgrimage and that there is discrimination as per the constitution’s Article 14 where the petitioner had failed to prove it.
Beeran mentioned that in the year 2012, the Supreme Court had given a green signal to the Haj policy by the central that out of 100 percent, 75 percent will be given to that state committee Haj quota while the remaining will be allotted to the private trip machinists. He further mentioned that the private tour operators charge an expensive amount of Rs 4 lakh for the stay in Saudi Arabia and travel while the state committee charges Rs 2 lakh for the same.
The Haj Committee of Kerala mentioned that nearly 4.48 lakh pilgrims had requested for this year’s pilgrimage but only 1.23 lakh pilgrimage can be accommodated by the state due to the reduced number of quota.
It further stated that the reduction in state Haj quota will result in exploitations of the pilgrimage by the private tour operators while also mentioning that there is no specific justification for the reduction.
The allocation of Haj quota to the states has shaped into discrepancy as per the thoughts of Bhushan. He further stated that there are minimum applications in many states for the pilgrimage for Haj as compared to Kerala but the states still enjoy the highest number of Haj quota but unlike them, states like Kerala the reduced state quote for Haj will suffer to meet the heavy applications for the Haj pilgrimage.