ISLAMABAD – The Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony haspostponed the balloting for the successful hajj applicants scheduled to beheld on Wednesday.
The balloting for those who had applied for this year’s Hajj under theregular government scheme was scheduled for today, however, it has beenpostponed and the next date has not been announced yet. the deadline forsubmission of applications was April 2nd.
There were two schemes announced by government for this year’s Islamicritual. The first one was regular scheme under which anyone could applywhile the second one was Sponsorship Scheme under which payment was to bemade in foreign currency from abroad; the quota was evenly distributedbetween both.
The official figures regarding Hajj applications are alarming as only89,000 applications have been received so far under the regular andsponsorship scheme in different banks of the country. If the applicantsfail to show interest in the Sponsorship scheme in next few days, theproposal to declare every applicant successful would be finalized.
The Sponsorship Scheme which apparently looked lucrative did not manage toattract sizeable number of pilgrims while the figures for regularapplicants have also fallen this year.
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Meanwhile, the Ministry of Religious Affairs contacted the Ministry ofFinance and asked additional $235 million to send pilgrims on Hajj and incase the funds are arranged, all pilgrims of the regular scheme could besent to Hajj without balloting.
The Sponsorship Hajj Scheme was introduced to inject foreign currency intothe dwindling foreign exchange reserves of the country under which it wasannounced that those who deposit money in foreign currency would not haveto go through balloting.
It merits mentioning that this is the first time Saudi Arabia would bewelcoming pilgrims in large numbers i.e around 2.3 after the pandemicrestrictions have been lifted. Around one million people joined the 2022Hajj season and only those in age bracket 18 to 65 who were fullyvaccinated or immunised against the virus and did not suffer from chronicdiseases were allowed to visit the kingdom.