The Gujarat High Court’s division bench of Chief Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice M S Shah on Tuesday deferred further hearing on the ‘erroneous’ list of Haj pilgrims from Gujarat to October 6. As every state is allotted a limited quota as per their population ratio and there is huge rush of pilgrims, the names are sorted out through draw of lots by Haj committees of respective states.In Gujarat, which has been allotted a quota of 4,211 pilgrims by the Central Haj Committee (CHC), about 7,200 pilgrims were selected by mistake through a computer generated draw on April 21 this year.Although the CHC corrected the mistake on April 22 and held another draw for 4,211 from among the 7,200, it led to complications. Those who had their names on the list of 7,200 sorted out earlier had celebrated the event and made arrangements for the pilgrimage.Mohammed Moosa Hajiba, whose name got dropped during the second draw, approached the Gujarat High Court, beseeching that it was the mistake of the Haj committee and hence, he should be allowed to go for Haj. Hajiba and others, through their counsel Javed Ghasura, demanded that more than 4,211 people be accommodated in the VIP quota or the vacant quota of other states. However, the CHC and Ministry of External Affairs, through advocates Abhishek Mehta and Rituraj Meena respectively, submitted in the court that 24,000 applications were received against the VIP quota of 6,000 and hence there was no way to accommodate the people from the ‘erroneous’ list. They also submitted that there were no vacancies in the quota of other states. In fact, there was waiting list in every state.When approached, H A Munshi, an official of the Gujarat Haj Committee (GHC) said that GHC had no role in the draw of lots. “It was the sole prerogative of the CHC but even CHC can’t increase or decrease the quota strength allotted to each state on the basis of their population,” he said.According to him, Gujarat was allotted 3.22 per cent of the total 1.57 lakh Haj pilgrims from India allowed by the Saudi Government. “In fact, the Gujarat quota at a rate of 3.22 per cent comes to 3,457 only, but CHC accommodated 754 extra pilgrims by utilising the spare quota of other states,” said Munshi.
