Fair limits: Court stops ministry allotting Hajj quota

Ministry of Religious Affairs must also put new Hajj Policy online.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court Chief Justice (CJ) Umar Ata Bandial on Monday restrained the Ministry of Religious Affairs from allotting a 5,000 quota for pilgrims to private Hajj Group Organisers (HGOs).

The CJ also directed the ministry to place the new Hajj Policy 2013 on the ministry’s website in order to facilitate the new HGOs.

The court also sought a reply from the ministry on a report submitted by the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) on cartelisation among old tour operators.

The petitioner, Aqsa World Travel & Tours (Pvt), through its lawyer Muhammad Azhar Siddique submitted that the government had announced Hajj Policy 2013 under which a 179,210 pilgrim quota had been allotted.

Out of this 50% share (89,605 ) had been allotted to private tour operators and the remainder to government HGOs.

The counsel submitted that the LHC had in June 2012 asked the ministry to allot a 5,000 pilgrim quota to private HGOs on recovering the outstanding defaulters or obtaining details about them from Saudi Arabia.

However, the ministry was allotting quotas to only the old HGOs who had also been pointed out by the CCP in its inquiry report, the lawyer added.

Quoting from the CCP’s report, he argued that the ministry had stopped allotting a quota to private HGOs which was a violation of earlier court orders.

He added that the cost of Hajj under the government policy had reached Rs421,070. He said the cost could not be borne by the poor. He alleged that the ministry was deliberately ousting private HGOs from the process.

He requested the court to take notice of the matter and direct the ministry to ensure that the allotment of quota among all HGOs is on merit. The court will resume the hearing on March 18.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2013.