Hajj Policy: Larger bench to take up plea on June 1

Petitioners accuse religious affairs ministry of nepotism.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court on Friday referred more than 50 identical petitions challenging the Hajj Policy of 2011 for hearing before a larger bench.

Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry fixed June 1 for the next hearing.

The petitions were filed by Meerub Travel Tours (Pvt) Ltd, Travel Shop Limited and others through Advocate Ahmed Awais, Advocate Tipu Salman Makhdoom and Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique.

Petitioners’ counsel stated on Friday that the Ministry of Religious Affairs was denying hajj quotas to their clients. They said the LHC had already declared that quota allocation should be on merit and that no one should be discriminated against.

The ministry, they said, was giving the quota to its favourites.

They said government would make arrangements for half of the 180,000 pilgrims that would go for hajj from Pakistan this year. The remaining, they said, would perform hajj through the 607 tour operators registered with the ministry.

The petitioners had said that the ministry was violating Articles 25, 18 and 4 of the Constitution by not considering new operators in quota allocation.

They had requested the court to declare the Hajj policy of 2011 illegal to the extent of private tour operators and to direct the ministry to allocate quotas on merit.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2011.