The Kerala State Haj Committee has sought restoration of the embarkation point for Haj pilgrimage at the Calicut International Airport.
C. Mohammed Faizy, chairman of the committee, told the media on Thursday that over 80% of applicants for the Haj pilgrimage every year were from the Malabar region. Considering this, it was an injustice to name the Cochin International Airport as the embarkation point where only 20% of the pilgrims rely on. As many as 13,457 had embarked on the Haj pilgrimage from two airports in 2019, of whom 11,204 were from the Calicut airport. Only 2,253, who were from the eight districts from Thrissur to Thiruvananthapuram, had started from the Kochi airport that year. As many as 26,604 had applied for the pilgrimage in 2020, of whom 20,881 had chosen the Calicut airport as the embarkation point.
Mr. Faizy said that the embarkation point was shifted to Kochi from Karipur in 2015 in the name of runway re-carpeting work there. For the next consecutive years, Kochi continued to be the boarding point for the Haj pilgrimage. Following consistent protests, the facility was restored at the Calicut airport in 2019. However, when the number of embarkation points were reduced in the wake of COVID-19, the Calicut airport was ignored again.
Mr. Faizy said that the pilgrims were greatly disappointed by this. Aged pilgrims from the Malabar region are now being forced to travel for hours to reach Kochi. Thousands of people had been using the Calicut airport for the past one-and-a-half decades. There is a well-equipped Haj house adjacent to it and a women’s block is coming up there, he said.
Mr. Faizy alleged that the move to reduce the runway area in the guise of expanding the runway safety area would ultimately lead to denial of permission for the operation of wide-bodied aircraft. He urged the authorities to desist from such moves and look for alternative measures.
