ISLAMABAD, Oct 9: A standing committee of the National Assembly has asked the Religious Affairs Ministry to accommodate the Haj applications of Afghan refugees living in the country for more than 15 years.

The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Religious Affairs, Zakat and Ushr met here at the parliament house on Thursday to review Haj arrangements.

It was informed by the officials of Religious Affairs Ministry that nearly 164,000 Haj applications were received, crossing the permissible quota of 120,000 pilgrims and the government had decided to select the required number of pilgrims through balloting.

The committee asked the ministry to accommodate as many as Afghan refugee applicants as possible for the Haj. The members said that the refugees who were living in Pakistan for the last 15 to 20 years and owned huge assets deserved sympathetic consideration irrespective of the fact that they were not Pakistani citizens.

A member of the standing committee and deputy parliamentary leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, told Dawn after the meeting that the committee noted that making it compulsory for Haj applicants to produce Nadra’s computerized national identity cards and then asking hefty fee for arranging the cards had given rise to corruption with bribes as high as Rs20,000.

He said: “We have asked the religious affairs ministry also to accommodate those 6,600 left over Haj applicants including some aged people who could not perform Haj last year owing to the exhaustion of quota and refusal of visas.”

According to an official press release, the standing committee constituted a sub-committee which would visit Saudi Arabia to inspect Haj arrangements made by the ministry.