ISLAMABAD, Dec 14: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal has convened an all-party conference on Dec 18 in Islamabad to discuss the issue of omission of information about religion from machine-readable passports.

The MMA has also convened a meeting of its supreme council on Dec 24 to chalk out a plan for its agitation. MMA's deputy parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said that the alliance would force the government to re-introduce the column about religion in the passport.

He said that the party had urged Saudi Arabia not to entertain any Pakistani passport without details about religion for Haj or Umrah. Mr Ahmed termed it a delicate issue and said that the omission of religion in passports would only benefit the Qadianis since Islam prohibited non-Muslims from entering the precincts of Haramain Sharifain (Makkah and Madina).

He said the MMA had decided to make the issue of inclusion of religion column in machine-readable passports part of its countrywide agitation campaign and would not sit idle until it was re-entered in the national passport.

He termed the omission of the said column a conspiracy which would be foiled. He alleged that the omission was aimed at infiltrating a large number of Qadiani preachers in the Holy lands. Such a move, he said, would be thwarted by the faithful.

The MMA leader said that they assigned a high priority to the issue as they felt that it affected the faith of the entire Muslim nation. Answering a question about the agenda of MMA's Dec 24 supreme council meeting, he said: "We will discuss the pace of the anti-uniform campaign till Dec 19 (after the last public rally in Rawalpindi) and will chalk out a strategy for future."