New Delhi: Government today (Oct 20, 2004) raised the number of Haj pilgrims from India by 10,000, taking the figure to 82,000 next year.

"We had applications for 82,000 Haj pilgrims and the Cabinet decided to clear all of them. The subsidy would be the same as paid last year," Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Gulam Nabi Azad told reporters in New Delhi.

The number of application this year grew by 10,000 as compared to last year.

In a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, the Cabinet also cleared proposals to add Guwahati and Aurangabad as new embarkation points for Haj 2005.

Gaya has been now substituted as embarkation point with Patna in the list of Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Calicut, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur and Srinagar.

The Government also decided to retain the earlier eligibility criteria of not permitting family members of income tax payee in availing subsidized fare. The amount of Rs 12,000 paid by each pilgrim for the round trip to Jeddah/Madinah and the remaining cost subsidy to be borne by Government as payment to airlines was also maintained by the Cabinet today.

It was also decided to release an estimated amount of Rs 75.77 crore to Airlines to settle their outstanding dues for the year 2001-04.

As many as 56,000 pilgrims would be flown by Saudi Arabia Airlines and the rest by Air India to Jeddah/Madinah and back at airfare of $ 700 plus $ 10 insurance surcharge per pilgrim.

The pilgrims from Chennai and Kolkata would be charged $ 770 besides $ 10 insurance surcharge.

The State-owned Indian Airlines will operate hub and spoke flights from Srinagar to Delhi from Guwahati and Patna to Delhi/Kolkata and from Aurangabad to Mumbai.