Telangana may get 1,000 more Haj seats

Hyderabad: Good news for Telangana Haj pilgrims. Those who couldn’t make it in the qurrah (draw of lots) need not despair. The State Haj Committee is expecting an additional 1,000 seats in the coming days. This follows below quota applications received in several states. The leftover seats will be redistributed among all states and Telangana is hopeful of getting at least 1,000 additional seats.

The draw of lots held on Saturday by the Telangana State Haj Committee left many disappointed. Those who didn’t find their names in the list of selected pilgrims stormed the chamber of the Haj Committee special officer Prof. S.A. Shukoor, in protest. A group of women even dropped the name of a MIM legislator and threatened to take up the matter with him.

Mr Shukoor pacified the protesters saying the computerised district-wise draw took place in a transparent manner and he couldn’t help if they were not selected.

He assured them they could get seats in the waiting list, which is expected to be pretty long, as in several states the number of pilgrims who applied for Haj was less than the allotted quota. This has resulted in 23,084 seats being left unfilled to be redistributed by the Haj Committee in all the states.. The highest number of 8,411 applications were from Hyderabad and the lowest of four from Mahabubabad.