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| No Police verification for Hajj passports | | | Agencies
New Delhi, June 29: To ease issuance of temporary passports to Haj pilgrims, the Centre has decided to do away with police verification of those planning to go to the holy city of Mecca to perform Hajj.
The Hajj Committee of India today said the decision to this effect came after two meetings in Delhi and Bangalore on June eight and ten, chaired by N Ravi, Secretary (East), Ministry of External Affairs.
The issue of Hajj passport for Saudi Arabia will be valid for eight months only and this will not be renewed.
"The police verification for Hajj pilgrims has been waived off. The decision was taken keeping in mind the difficulties in issuance of passports to pilgrims in a short span of two months," Mohammad Owais, the Chief Executive Officer of Hajj Committee of India, told reporters here.
However, he said those pilgrims who would like to make their Haj passports a permanent one later will have to go through police verification.
Owais also said that pilgrims, who have already submitted their application forms for passport and their police verification pending till June 20, will be issued passports.
"If there is no adverse reports, pilgrims will get their passports," Owais said, adding the Haj Committee has received around 3.57 lakh applications this year from devotees who want to perform Haj this year.
He claimed the machinery were also damaged by the "attackers". But fire brigade officials said the protesters did not allow them to go to the scene while with police escorts 12 of their units from neighbouring districts including the capital Dhaka could reach the factory complex, set up on 30 acres of land.
Another group of several thousand workers tried to break into nearly special Export Processing Zone breaking the main entrance of the complex when the police tried to resist them firing rubber bullets and hurling tear gas.
"But the protesters backed off only when police reinforcements of riot police chased the attackers from behind," a local journalist who witnessed the violence said.
The factory violence erupted on Saturday when a garment worker was killed and two others were injured critically as guards fired gunshots to disperse agitating labourers demanding arrear dues and protesting wage cuts.
A second factory worker died yesterday allegedly in police shootout.
"The situation is now relatively calm with deployment of huge number of extra policemen in riot gears at the scene," officer in charge of local Ashulia police station Monwar Hossain said.
Ready-made garment sector is the number one foreign currency-earning source for Bangladesh while it engaged 40 per cent of industrial workforce and contributes 76 per cent to the GDP.
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