PESHAWAR, July 1: The Peshawar High Court on Monday suspended two orders of the ministry of Haj and religious affairs about reducing the quota of private Haj operators and sought comments from the secretary concerned.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Irshad Qaiser and Justice Malik Manzoor while granting interim relief to around 14 Haj operators suspended the impugned orders issued by the ministry on June 27 and 28 and fixed July 8 for next hearing.

The bench directed that the secretary Haj and religious affairs should positively file comments in the cases within a week.

The petitioners have challenged the impugned orders stating that the government had in an arbitrary manner changed the ratio of the quotas meant for government and private Haj operators.

Advocate Abdul Mabud Khattak appeared for the petitioners and contended that according to the policy in vogue during past many years the quota of pilgrims was distributed among the government and private operators as 50 per cent each.

He added that in past the allotted quota of Pakistan from Saudi Arabia government was around 179,000 pilgrims, but recently the Saudi government made a 20 per cent cut in the said quota due to the ongoing construction work at the Holy Land of Makkah.

The counsel stated that instead of distributing the said 20 per cent cut among the government and private operators the government decided to pass on the entire load to the private Haj operators. He pointed out that first an order was issued on June 27 regarding allocation of around 900 pilgrims’ quota to new pre-qualified operators on open auction basis.

He questioned when already the number of pilgrims from Pakistan was reduced then how could the same be given to new operators.

Later on, he stated that on June 28 the ministry of religious affairs issued another order through which the previous policy of equal distribution among the government and private operators was changed and now the government retained 60 per cent of the allotted quota of Saudi government whereas private operators had been entitled only to 40 per cent.

Mr Khattak pointed out that the petitioners had already paid money in advance on account of residential facilities in Saudi Arabia, hiring of relevant staff there and payments to different airliners. He added that if the court did not suspend the impugned orders the petitioners would face irreparable loss.