The Haj pilgrimage scheduled for 2021 will be carried out in accordance with new guidelines framed by the Saudi Arabian government in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Union’s ministry of minority affairs said on Saturday.
As part of the new guidelines, an age restriction is likely to apply to pilgrims, the ministry said.
Online registration for the pilgrimage began on Saturday and will close on December 10, said the minister for minority affairs, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The pilgrimage was suspended this year due to the ongoing pandemic.
Applicants can also apply online, offline or via the Haj mobile app. In view of the coronavirus pandemic, we are making it mandatory for all pilgrims to submit their negative COVID-19 report from the RT-PCR test. The test date should be 72 hours before boarding a flight to Saudi Arabia, “he said.
According to the guidelines, applications submitted for Haj 2020 by women traveling without a male companion (without mehram status) will also be valid for next year’s pilgrimage.
The boarding points for the pilgrimage have been reduced to 10 from the previous 21. The embarkation points are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Cochin, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Srinagar, the ministry said.
The guidelines for the pilgrimage were framed after deliberations that included officials from the ministries of minority affairs, health, foreign affairs, civil aviation; the Haj Committee of India, the Embassy of India in Saudi Arabia and the Consul General of India in Jeddah.
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