ISLAMABAD: This year too, the Haj policy announced by the government landed in the Supreme Court which on Thursday allowed the April 29 balloting with a condition to withhold its outcome pending the current litigation.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar also directed the government to submit a concise statement whether or not the condition set by the court through a 2013 judgment in the Dossani Travels (Pvt) Ltd case was followed.

The bench had taken up a joint appeal filed by 10 tour operators — all members of the Private Haj Group Organisation (HGO) — against the Sindh High Court’s April 15 verdict rejecting their petition challenging the Haj policy 2016.

Moved by senior counsel Mohammad Akram Sheikh, the appeal requested the apex court to set aside the policy which had reduced the quota of private tour operators to 40 per cent from 50pc. The federal government, it said, should be directed not to undertake Haj operations unless a law referred to in Articles 18 and 253 of the Constitution was framed.

Defending the government’s stance of increasing its quota to 60pc from 50pc, Deputy Attorney General Sohail Mehmood said the decision would help protect the rights of the underprivileged and general public. He said the government-sponsored package ranged between Rs261,000 and Rs270,000 while the minimum package offered by private tour operators was Rs450,000.

Akram Sheikh recalled that the court in the Dossani Travels case had ordered the government to set up a committee, headed by religious affairs secretary and comprising representatives of the Competition Commission of Pakistan, ministries of foreign affairs and law as well as the attorney general, before framing future Haj policy. But despite a memorandum of understanding reached between the HGO and the government and ignoring the previous practice, the government had increased its quota this year.

The petition argued that the fundamental right of performing and providing services of Haj had been guaranteed under Article 20 of the Constitution and it could only be regulated by law and not by any executive order. It regretted that the government had increased its quota without consulting or taking the HGO into confidence on the circumstances necessitating it to deviate from the practice being followed for the past several years.

“Thus, the Haj policy 2016 has left the petitioners to hang to the fancies of the religious affairs ministry which were only deeply entrenched in exercising unbridled executive powers and unguided discretion,” it said.

The petition said Haj was a personal and private obligation for those who could afford it, adding that there was little scope for the government to interfere in the performance of this duty and to compel an intending pilgrim to only depend on the services to be rendered by the government, which were far from satisfactory.

It claimed that since 2005, there had been numerous complaints of corruption and mishandling of pilgrims by the government functionaries as compared to the private tour operators. In fact by appropriating to itself 60pc Haj quota, the government had created a partial monopoly in its favour.

“The Haj operations have been carried out through public and private cooperation since 2005 and the quota of private operators has always been 50pc. Keeping in view this practice, the petitioners had incurred huge expenditure on mobilisation and making arrangements for handling intending pilgrims. They have, thus, a legitimate expectation to be treated in the same manner as were being treated earlier, but the policy is totally arbitrary and fanciful, resulting in huge financial losses to the private operators,” the petition said.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2016