A bench of justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai quoted Quran to justify doing away with the subsidy, which was around Rs 685 crores in 2011, noting that many Muslims would not be very "comfortable" to know that their Haj is funded to a large extent by the Government.
"We are also not oblivious of the fact that in many other purely religious events there are direct and indirect deployment of state funds and state resources. Nevertheless, we are of the view that Haj subsidy is something that is best done away with," the bench said.
The Centre at present foots an amount of Rs.38,000 per Haji by giving subsidised airfare.
The bench fixed a time frame of ten years for gradually eliminating subsidies to Haj pilgrims. Last year, about 1.25 lakh pilgrims went for Haj.
"We, therefore, direct the Central Government to progressively reduce the amount of subsidy so as to completely eliminate it within a period of 10 years from today. The subsidy money may be more profitably used for upliftment of the community in education and other indices of social development," the bench observed.
"This Court has no claim to speak on behalf of all the Muslims of the country and it will be presumptuous for us to try to tell the Muslims what is for them a good or bad religious practice.
"Nevertheless, we have no doubt that a very large majority of Muslims applying to the Haj Committee for going to Haj would not be aware of the economics of their pilgrimage and if all the facts are made known a good many of the pilgrims would not be very comfortable in the knowledge that their Haj is funded to a substantial extent by the Government," the bench said. (more)