Delhi HC seeks Centre’s stand on plea for deputation of Muslim govt employees in Jeddah to serve Haj pilgrims

The plea claimed that other central or state government/UT administration employees are not eligible for any deputation as per a March 20 office memorandum, which earlier was a practice of the Government of India to send male and female members of the Muslim community who are employees of various Government department on deputation for a temporary basis to Consulate General of India, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to assist Haj pilgrims as coordinators (admin), assistant Haj officers (AHO) and Haj assistants (HA).

The plea sought a direction to amend the office memorandum to extend these opportunities to Muslim employees of the Centre, states and Union territories.

The plea stated that the objective of sending the deputing officers from all states and Union territories to the Consulate General of India, Jeddah, was to help the pilgrims who go to perform Haj from all over India, as India is a multilingual country.

“Therefore, officers from different States are able to render appropriate help to Hajj pilgrims. The Impugned Office Memorandum would defeat the said purpose. This fact is evident from the previous Office Orders wherein one of the
eligibility criteria is (are) proficiency in regional language, amongst others, which clearly depicts that the objective of sending deputing officers from all States/UTs was to help the cause of the pilgrims as well, given that the pilgrims who go to perform Hajj belong to all States of India and speak different languages and all pilgrims are not efficient in Hindi, English or Arabic, hence the officers from different States are only able to provide effective assistance to such pilgrims,” the plea claimed.

The plea alleged that the office memorandum specifically cited that the work involved is administrative in nature and thus, there was no reason why only CAPF employees were eligible and other permanent employees were not eligible. It claimed that the office memorandum violates Article 14 of the Constitution.

The plea prayed for a direction to the ministry to extend the date for the new office memorandum, if any, until further modification and stay the March 20 office memorandum.