Arrangements being made to vaccinate Haj pilgrims: Union Minister Naqvi
Mumbai: Union Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Tuesday said arrangements are being made to administer coronavirus vaccines to those going from India for the Haj pilgrimage.
He was speaking after chairing a meeting of the Haj Committee of India officials and Haj Group organisers at Haj House in south Mumbai.
The last date for submission of application forms for Haj 2021 is January 10, he said. Embarkation point-wise estimated cost per Haj pilgrim has been reduced, he added.
Naqvi said around 50 per cent of the total applicants so far are women and over 700 women have so far applied under the without 'mehram' (male companion) category.
Over 2100 women had applied for Haj 2020 under that category. These women will go to Haj 2021 as the application filled up by them for Haj 2020 is also valid for Haj 2021, a statement from the minister's office said.
Keeping in view the pandemic situation and feedback from Air India and other agencies, embarkation points for Haj 2021 have been reduced to 10, Naqvi said.
The 10 embarkation points are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kochi, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Srinagar.
Earlier, there were 21 Haj embarkation points across the country.
Saudi authorities had announced in June that due to the pandemic, pilgrims from outside the kingdom would not be permitted to enter Saudi Arabia to perform Haj last year. This year the Haj will be in July.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
