A total number of 200,000 Indian Muslims are set to perform the life-time journey of hajj this year, setting a record for the Muslim community in the Indian peninsula, Outlook India reported.

Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi announced on Saturday that 160,000 pilgrims will travel through the Hajj Committee of India and the rest through Hajj Group Organizers.

He added that women Hajj pilgrims going without Mahram will be 2,340, or double of last year’s 1,180.

“This year too, the ministry has made arrangement to send these women for Haj without the lottery system. Of the 200,000 total pilgrims, women would be around 48 percent,” Naqvi said at the inaugural of the newly-renovated hall of the Haj House here.

The pilgrims will leave by more than 500 flights from 21 embarkation points all over India.

Muslims from around the world pour to Makkah every year to perform hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam.

Hajj consists of several ceremonies, which are meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.

Every able-bodied adult Muslim who can financially afford the trip must perform hajj at least once in a lifetime.

Hajj 2019 will commence on Friday, 9th of August 2019 and will continue till Wednesday, 14th of August 2019; in the evening time.

The first hajj flight is set to arrive on Thursday, July 4, carrying 301 Bangladeshis to Jeddah.