Islamabad: Pakistan government has announced that all 72,869 applications received for Hajj this year will be accepted and there would be no balloting.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Minister for Religious Affairs Mufti Abdul Shakoor made the announcement in a brief address.

Dar said that the Ministry of Religious Affairs received 72,869 applications for the regular Hajj scheme, exceeding the government’s regular scheme quota of 44,190. “The finance ministry decided to accept all applications and no balloting will be held this year on the direction of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the wishes of the religious affairs minister.”

The finance ministry is arranging the necessary resources including the extra foreign exchange reserves with the support of the State Bank of Pakistan for the Pakistani pilgrims. Dar asked the intending pilgrims to pray for the prosperity of the country.

This year, the government introduced the ‘Sponsorship Hajj Scheme’, an initiative allowing overseas Pakistanis to apply for Hajj themselves or sponsor their family in Pakistan to make the pilgrimage by bearing the Hajj expense in US dollars. This scheme, with a fixed 50 per cent quota for overseas Pakistanis, was aimed at generating $194 million in pilgrimage expenses, reducing the outflow of foreign currency, and boosting the dollar-starved economy.

However, despite an extended deadline, the scheme received only 6,000 applications against the 45,000 available seats.

Pakistan’s religious ministry had previously announced that as many as 179,210 Pakistani pilgrims will be able to perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage in 2023, with the quota equally divided between public and private schemes. Last year, some 81,132 Pakistani pilgrims were among the one million people who performed Hajj in 2022.