97,000 Pilgrims Pay Second Hajj Installment as Deadline Ends, Rs61 Billion Received

The window for the second Hajj installment payment under the government scheme closed on Tuesday, and by the time it did, nearly 97,000 intending pilgrims had paid up. The religious affairs ministry put the receipts for this single installment at Rs61 billion, collected through the digital Hajj portal — a sign of how much of the process has moved away from bank queues and onto phones and screens.

How the money came in

Of the payments the ministry counted, 45,245 pilgrims paid through the 1Link network and 3,685 used debit or credit cards, while 47,563 still went the familiar route of a manual bank challan. The deposit window had run from October 5 to October 20, and the ministry had warned throughout that an application left unpaid at the deadline would be cancelled.

The medical certificate is not optional

Paying was only half the paperwork. The ministry repeated that every pilgrim must also download the medical fitness certificate from the Hajj portal, have it verified and signed by an authorised doctor, and upload it back to the portal or the Pak Hajj app. Applicants were urged to keep checking the app for the next round of instructions, so that a missing document does not quietly undo a paid-up application.