PESHAWAR, July 29: The Peshawar High Court on Monday issued a contempt notice to the federal religious affairs secretary over the auction of Haj quota for private operators despite the court’s bar.

A bench comprising Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Qaisar Rasheed directed the secretary to file reply to the notice until Aug 6, the next date of hearing.

It directed deputy attorney general Farooq Shah to accept the notice on behalf of the secretary to ensure that the reply was filed before the next date.

A court bench had on July 1 suspended two orders of the ministry of religious affairs regarding reduction of quota of private Haj operators as well as including new Haj operators in the auction of quota process. The writ petition was filed by Minhaj Haj Tour Operators and 13 others.

A few days ago, the petitioners filed a contempt of court petition, saying in violation of the court orders, the government carried out the auction of Haj quota on July 11, while the case had still been pending.

Abdul Mabud Khattak, lawyer for the petitioner, said after the court issued orders on July 1, the ministry of religious affairs issued almost an identical order to hoodwink the court.

He said contrary to the court orders, the government included 62 new Haj operators in the auction.

The lawyer said the two impugned orders were issued by the ministry on June 27 and 28, which were suspended by the high court as the petitioners said the government had in an arbitrary manner changed the ratio of the quotas meant for government and private Haj operators.

He said according to the policy in vogue during past many years the quota of Hajis was distributed among the government and private operators with ratio of 50 percent each.

Mr Khattak said in the past, the allotted quota of Pakistan from Saudi Arabian government was around 179,000 Hajis, but recently, the Saudi government cut the said quota 20 per cent due to the ongoing construction work in Makkah.

The petitioners said instead of distributing the said 20 percent cut among the government and private operators, the government decided to pass on the entire load to the private Haj operators. They said an order was issued on June 27 regarding allocation of around 900 Haj quota to new pre-qualified operators on open auction basis but surprisingly, when already the number of Hajis from Pakistan was reduced, then how could the same be given to new operators.

Later, the petitioners said 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 percent of the allotted quota of Saudi government whereas private operators had been entitled only to 40 percent, thus the private operators had to face shortage of around 36,000 Haj quota.