NEW DELHI: The Indian government has announced it will no longer give a “subsidy” for Haj in line with an order by the country’s top court.
“A constitutional bench of the Supreme Court had, during the Congress regime in 2012, directed that the Haj subsidy be done away with. Hence, in the new policy, as per the recommendations of a committee, we have decided to do away with the Haj subsidy gradually,” Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Tuesday.
This year 175,000 Indian Muslims are expected to perform Haj, according to the pilgrim quota fixed by Saudi Arabia.
Naqvi said the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government wanted to “empower” Muslims “without appeasement” and removing the subsidy was a step in that direction.
The subsidy amount, given mostly in the form of discounts on air tickets, had come down in the years following the court order, which called for the decades-old scheme’s termination by 2022.
Most Muslims are not bothered about the subsidy’s withdrawal, saying it was not significant and the measure was used to help the loss-making state airline Air India as it carried the bulk of Haj pilgrims.
Senior Congress party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said the real beneficiaries of the subsidy were airline companies, in particular, Air India, and not the Hajis.
“The normal fare from any part of the country to Jeddah is far less than what the airlines are charging. So, the actual beneficiaries are the airlines,” he said.
Prominent Muslims also want the government to allow airlines to compete for Haj pilgrim traffic so that people can get better deals and services.
All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi said the government was making “too much noise” over an amount of two billion rupees (about US$30 million), which would have been provided as “subsidy” this year. --Bernama