Under major development that happened in the country very recently, the Supreme Court has saved the Ministry of External Affairs from a major embarrassment by removing the stoppage on the travel of more than 45K Haj pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.

It is to be mentioned here that the roadblock was introduced by the Kerala High Court and according to the Bilateral Haj Agreement between India and Saudi Arabia close to 160K pilgrims were supposed to go for the holy trip out which close to 115K were through The Haj committee while the remaining 45K were through the private operators.

But as the high court did not allow the private operators to participate in the process, the matter then reached the door of Supreme Court which had to intervene immediately.

While the Bench at the Supreme Court did not fault the verdict passed by the Kerala High Court but realized that the effectiveness of the verdict could result in messing up with 45K people's trip to Mecca which is once in a lifetime experience. It may be noted here that people traveling via the private operators will not get the Rs. 28,000 subsidy offered by the government.