THE GREAT HAJ ROBBERY?
Agroup of Muslim pilgrims plans to petition the Bombay High Court over the treatment meted out by the government to those travelling to Saudi Arabia under the auspices of the Haj Committee, overseen by the Ministry of Minority Affairs. Some 180,000 pilgrims travel to Saudi for Haj each year, 140,000 of whom buy packages from the Haj Committee. The first flights take off around the middle of July and pilgrims have long been complaining about the prices charged by Air India.
Mohammad Yunus, a resident of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, paid Air India Rs 84,946 per person, for his family of six, to buy return tickets to Jeddah. His package, bought from the local Haj committee, for 40 days will cost him Rs 2.5 lakh, including accommodation in Mecca and Medina. If Yunus had taken his flight from Mumbai, he would have paid Rs 57,857 for his ticket. The extra Rs 27,089 he will fork out is because the rules only permit him to begin his journey from the location where his passport was issued. Commercial f lights to Mumbai from Aurangabad are substantially cheaper.
Indeed, Air India’s Haj package fare for its flight from Mumbai to Jeddah is pegged substantially higher than the ticket prices of other airlines, most of which charge about Rs 30,000 for the same f light. Fed up, Haj pilgrims refer to the prices as sanctioned “looting”. The rules make it mandatory to travel by Air India if they avail of the services of the Haj committee.
Sarfaraz Arzu, who edits the Urdu daily Hindustan and who plans to take his case to court alongside Yunus, argues that Air India enjoys a captive audience. Haj pilgrims, he says, are being taken advantage of and that Air India should be made to offer reasonable fares. The idea behind making pilgrims catch flights from so-called embarkation points, such as Aurangabad, was to reduce the load on the likes of Mumbai and Delhi. “But,” says Arzu, “the national airline seems to see it as an opportunity to mint money.”
An Air India official who asked to remain anonymous said the fare was higher becase the planes return empty from Saudi Arabia. “Haj flights,” he says, “are essentially charters. No other passengers are allowed
on board. So we need to recover our losses.” Apart from air fares, the 18 per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST) levied on Haj packages is also causing consternation. Some argue that five per cent GST would have been more appropriate. Earlier this month, the national consumer complaints body ruled that Haj pilgrims were not consumers and that the Haj Committee did not make a profit or charge a fee for its services.