New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to furnish details of Haj pilgrimage aspirants who are above 60 years and have applied for it five times without success.
A three-judge bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud sought the details of such applicants in a tabular form to find out as to how many of them could not get a chance to undertake the pilgrimage.
The Bench passed this brief order on a petition by the Kerala State Haj Committee seeking rationalisation of allocation of Haj quota, contending that Kerala has more applicants but lesser allocation of Haj seats while Bihar has lesser number of applicants but more quota of seats.
Appearing for the Centre, Additional Solicitor General Pinki Anand said the petitioner has not been able to flag the violation of Article 14 of the Constitution and in the absence of any violation, the petition was not maintainable.
In the last hearing, the court while refusing to stay the Guidelines for Haj-2018, made it clear that allotment of seats made by way of the state-by-state draw of lots in pursuance of the Guidelines for the pilgrimage in August 2018 shall be subject to the final order on validity of guidelines.
Appearing for the Centre the Attorney General K.K. Venugopal had submitted that the petitioner being a State committee could not question the Haj policy, which was formulated in consultation with the Haj Committee of India. He said the schedule for draw of lots was very tight and the May 15 deadline has to be complied with.
