In yesterday’s post I wrote that our worthies will not heed the supreme court’s words. This news piece proves it.

Despite stiff opposition by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Cabinet tonight approved more seats for Haj pilgrims, doling out more subsidy per seat.

The Cabinet agreed to airlift 18,000 more pilgrims for 2006, taking the total to one lakh…

Appeasement it appears, is an addiction that you can never overcome. The Haj subsidy, a contentious issue for most of our post-independence history seems so appealing that even the “fundamentalist” NDA government could not abolish it.

As the news report notes, the subsidy per person is 12500 per person. For a lakh people, it is a staggering 1250000000. Taxpayer money for promoting secularism and maintaining communal harmony. Why this proposal was expedited in a monumental hurry is explained here:

Sources in the Civil Aviation Ministry said that the proposal was approved despite loose ends so that its announcement did not get blocked by the Election Commission announcing the Bihar poll dates.

So all secular parties can use this as proof to bolster sloganeering in their campaigns. The honest, law-fearing, and tax-paying middle class are anyway available to fund these secular antics.