Haj group organisers were blacklisted by the Central Government, Delhi High Court rejected the decision

Krishna Bihari Singh Live HindustanHindustan, New DelhiMon, 23 Sep 2024 03:29 PM

Share

The Delhi High Court has quashed the Centre’s decision to blacklist several Hajj group organisers for alleged violation of the Hajj Policy 2023. Hearing more than 15 petitions of the organisers, a bench of Justice Sanjeev Narua said that the show cause notices issued to the petitioners contain ambiguous language. Therefore, the orders of blacklisting are legally unstable and violative of the principles of natural justice.

The Ministry of Minority Affairs had last year blacklisted the petitioners from applying for registration as Haj Group Organiser (HGO) for a period of five to 15 years effective from Haj 2024. It had also ordered forfeiture of their security deposits.

The show cause notices were issued by the authorities in May 2023 following a complaint alleging black marketing and cartelisation of HGO seats. While the impugned orders (of blacklisting) are detailed and clearly cite specific provisions and clauses of the Haj Policy 2023 which were violated by the petitioners, the show cause notices do not mention any specific violation of the Haj Policy, 2023 by the petitioners.

Therefore, in the absence of specific details of the provisions in the show cause notice regarding the proposed action of blacklisting or banning, the petitioners were not given a fair opportunity to raise a proper defence against such severe punitive measures. The impugned orders in all the aforesaid petitions are therefore set aside.

The court directed the ministry to issue a fresh show-cause notice within a week, outlining the clauses of the Haj policy allegedly violated and the proposed action. The bench said a fresh decision would be given by the authorities within 10 days after this.

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}