NAGPUR:

has sought a one-time fund of Rs 25,000 crore from the union government to buy

for the annual

in Saudi Arabia. The demand has come in the wake of a Supreme Court judgment, delivered in 2012, directing the government to gradually reduce and then completely phase out the subsidy given to Haj pilgrims within a period of ten years.

Addressing a press conference at Haj House in Gandhibagh on Thursday, Ibrahim Gulam Nabi Shaikh, chairman of the state committee, said that the central government has halved the subsidy amount to Rs200 crore this year. The government had initially promised to give a subsidy of Rs308 crore, he added.

Outlining the plan, Shaikh said that a fund of Rs25,000 crore should be given to Haj

of India, a statutory body of the union ministry of minority affairs. The fund would be used to purchase two to three aircraft exclusively for Haj

pilgrimage

and operated and maintained by the apex committee. The financial burden on lower income Muslims will increase substantially after the removal of subsidy by year 2022. If the committee gets its own planes, it would save cost on chartered flights to Mecca, he added.

This year, the cost of pilgrimage to Mecca Rs2.04 lakh and Rs2.37 lakh per person for category-II and I travellers respectively, said Shaikh. According to him, if the subsidy is removed, then the pilgrimage cost will increase by almost Rs1.5 lakh per person. Even in the current scenario, the entire benefit of subsidy is not passed on to the common man because the amount is given directly to Air India which absorbs most of it, said Shaikh. More than 10,000 Muslims from Maharashtra will leave for Mecca between August 10 and 12, he added.