Only 249 of the 488 applicants who requested visas to travel to Ajmer Sharif, the shrine of famed Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti in Rajasthan, have received them from India.
According to a spokesperson of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, over 200 Pakistani pilgrims had been deprived of paying homage to the Sufi saint.
He claimed that six employees sent to look after the pilgrims while they were in India had their requests for visas turned down by the Indian government. But according to him, only one of the six officials received clearance to travel with the Zaireen (pilgrims).
The official stated that all Zaireen have received SMS instructions to travel to Lahore, where they will board their flight to India on Tuesday.
Even when it could not use the coronavirus as an excuse anymore, India spent much of last year denying Muslim tourists from Pakistan the right to perform their religious rituals in its territory.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has a history of breaking the Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines, which India and Pakistan agreed on in September 1974.
The Urs of Hazrat Mujaddid Alif Sani, Hazrat Khawaja Alauddin Ali Ahmad Sabir, Hazrat Hafiz Abdullah Shah, Hazrat Khawaja Nizamuddin Auliya, Hazrat Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti, and Hazrat Amir Khusro all require pilgrims from Pakistan to travel to India each year, according to the Federal Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony.
A group of Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti followers was denied visas by the Indian government in February of last year, only two days before the Urs, according to Mian Fayyaz, the group’s leader. “We had been waiting all year to go. All of our preparations were put to waste when India unexpectedly refused to grant us visas.
