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Govt to add 2 more embarkation points for Hajj

Sixty Hajj delegates from all over the country, led by Tanvir Ahmed, chairman of the Central Hajj Committee, attended a daylong conference on Hajj 2003 in Srinagar on Sunday.

Those who attended the conference at the Centaur Lake View hotel on the banks of the Dal Lake included representatives of the Hajj committees of various states.

Inaugurating the conference, Union Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah said two new embarking points would be added in the current season to fly pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.

With this, the total number of embarking points in the country for Hajj pilgrims will go up to 12.

The minister said the addition of new embarking points is not only convenient for pilgrims, but will also help them save up to about Rs 5,000.

He said that last year 120,000 Indians performed the Hajj, the largest number of pilgrims after Indonesia and Pakistan.

Omar Abdullah said pilgrims mostly complain about the "lack of proper accommodation during the pilgrimage". He said several steps had been taken this time to provide comfortable accommodation to the pilgrims.

Last year, Omar said, the government had "increased the accommodation for each pilgrim by 30 per cent and ensured that all of them were accommodated nearer to the Haram Sharief".

He said the Jammu & Kashmir government had introduced an accident insurance scheme for pilgrims from the state. "A computerized database of pilgrims is being made available on the Internet so that their relatives get all the information about the Hajis immediately."

Regarding health care for the pilgrims, he said, "A dispensary has already been established at Makkah while another is being set up at Minnah during this year's pilgrimage."

Omar Abdullah said the unregulated carriage of pilgrims by private tour and travel operators was creating a lot of problems for the government as the private operators are not accountable to anybody and leave the pilgrims unattended. "This puts an additional burden on the government," he said.

He suggested uniform baggage rules for the pilgrims as excess baggage was making "it very difficult for authorities to transport".

Earlier, in his welcome address, Tanvir Ahmed dwelt in detail on the improvements made in the arrangements for the Hajj pilgrims. Syed Akbaruddin, India's consul in Jeddah, gave a presentation on Hajj 2002.

Addressing the conference, Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah accused Pakistan of "attempting to incite communal passion in India by engineering the selective killing of minorities in the state".

The chief minister accompanied the Hajj delegates to Chrar-e-Sharief to pay obeisance at the shrine of the revered Sufi saint, Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din.

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