UNION MINISTER for Minority Affairs Smriti Irani on Wednesday said the Centre has done away with the discretionary Haj quota for pilgrims, in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s resolve to end “VIP culture” in the country. “A decision has been taken [to end discretionary quota in Haj]. Prime Minister Modi had put forward his resolve to end VIP culture on the very first day of his term. VIP culture was put in place with respect to Haj during the UPA rule under which there was a special quota allocated to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Haj Committee and all those in the top constitutional posts,’’ Irani told TV9 Bharatvarsh channel, while hitting out at the Congress’s VIP culture. Irani said the President, Vice-President as well as she herself as the Minority Affairs Minister have dedicated to the move to the people, adding that when the quota was started in 2012, 5,000 seats had been reserved under it. Irani added that a new “exhaustive’’ Haj policy was being formulated, to reflect the Prime Minister’s resolve to take care of the needs of the poor. It will be announced soon, she said. Hearing a petition filed by the Centre in 2011, which challenged an earlier Bombay High Court order by which it had directed the Centre to give quota to 800 Haj pilgrims to private operators, the Supreme Court had called the VIP quota for Haj pilgrims as “bad religious practice”. In 2012, the Supreme Court reduced the VIP quota for Haj pilgrimage from 2,500 to just 240. Under the reduced quota, the President could recommend 70 pilgrims, the Vice-President 60, the Prime Minister 60 and the External Affairs Minister 50 pilgrims. The remaining 2,260 were moved to the general Haj category.
