By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
Lucknow: The utter chaos prevalent during the qurrah(lottery) on Thursday for Haj pilgrimage-2010 gave ample proof that the devotional journey will not be a smooth affair for the hajis of Uttar Pradesh.
cabinet minister and chairman state haj committee peforming the qura by random number generation technique using computer in Lucknow on Thursday.
A helpless looking senior cabinet minister and Chairman, State Haj Committee (SHC), Naseemuddin Siddqui blamed the union government for creating hurdles in the journey from hajis of the state. “The Haj Committee of India (HCI) and union government have turned a Nelson’s eye towards our pleas. They have altered the action plan at the last moment thus delaying things for the state,” said Siddiqui. He alleged that last date for submitting the regular forms for haj-2010 were postponed from May 5, 2010 to July 7. “This means that total schedule will be delayed by another one and a half month. It will result in a scramble for accomodation for hajis in Saudi Arabia. The hajis from UP will be left with inferior accomadation. It will also be hard to arrange seats in flights at the last moment,” he rued.
Siddiqui also lamented that haj committee of India (HCI) has not yet given any information about the prescribed money for the hajis. “It seems that they are hell bent upon harassing the hajis from UP. We at state level had decided for the lottery on Thursday but we received the information about our quota on Wednesday. Still we have not been provided the necessary forms and papers of the selected candidates by the HCI. Don’t be surprised if some of the selected candidates do not get their papers on time and face difficulties in submitting them on time,” alleged Naseemuddin.
Several hajis who were present during the lottery openly blamed the politicians for mishandling the affairs. “We have saved for our lifetime just to perform the haj. We are being made the scapegoat between the tug of war between the state-central relationships. These committees should be handed over to muslim clerics and politicans should be kept away from it,” retorted Mohd Tariq, an applicant for haj. Earlier also in haj-2008 similar scenes were witnessed with mismanagemetn becoming a common affair thus jeopardising chances of a smooth pilgrimage for most of the hajis.
Meanwhile, officials at state haj committee claimed that several new facilities have been started by them this year to make things easier. The provisional forms for the pilgrimage were made available in all districts and villages. Website, helpline and SMS services were also started for giving informations to the pilgrims. Nearly 55718 people have applied for the haj pilgrim in 2010 from U.P.
The state has a quota of 26180 pilgrims for 2010. Another 339 people have been selected without lottery as they have applied during past three years, 2007, 2008 and 2009 but could not make it to the lottery. Another 23 districts have few applicants than the number of seats allocated as per proportion of muslim population thus all such forms have been selected in the lottery.