With just 17 days remaining before the first batch of Indian Haj pilgrims set off for their journey, the Saudi Arabia government is yet to issue a single visa.
With just 17 days remaining before the first batch of Indian Haj pilgrims set off for their journey, the Saudi Arabia government is yet to issue a single visa. Last year by this time, more than 40,000 visas had been issued.
The Haj committee said there was a technical problem, as the Saudi government had adopted a new system to issue visas, but they hoped to get the visas issued Monday onwards.
According to sources in Haj Committee, the Ministry of Haj of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had adopted the e-path visa system since last year, which it said was triggering the delay.
A meeting was held in Haj Committee of India (HCI) office on Saturday in which it was informed that two officials from HCI were sent to Saudi to resolve the issue of visas. The two officers have came back and as per their report it is expected that visas would be issued Monday onwards.
According to sources, earlier, the HCI used to upload data directly on the Saudi external ministry’s website. However, since the e-path way was adopted, the data is uploaded on the website of ministry of Haj and then on the website of ministry of external affairs of Saudi Arabia. The HCI has already uploaded details of 85,000 passports. The first batch of Haj pilgrims is expected to leave India on August 4.
