The Saudi government has announced that prospective Hajj pilgrims from Australia, Europe and the United States would need to apply for visas via the government portal Motawif.
According to a report published by the Middle East Eye, the individual involved in helping facilitate investments into Traveazy, the company that has been contracted to process the western applications through Motawif, has links to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP.
Accel India Vice President Prashant Prakash has served on India's National Startup Advisory Council since 2020, and in 2021 became an adviser to Basavaraj Bommai, the chief minister of the BJP-run government in Karnataka.
According to Accel, it was Prakash who led the venture capital firm into partnering with two other operations when they collectively invested $7m in Traveazy in 2016.
In 2018, Accel was part of a consortium of five partners who invested a further $16m into Traveazy, which was co-founded by Indian nationals Geet Bhalla and Digvijay Pratap.
Indian activist Nabiya Khan criticised the decision of Saudi Arabia, saying that outsourcing the application process to a company with investor links to the BJP is "outrageous" and "dangerous".
She added that the BJP-led Karnataka government is at the centre of several anti-Muslim policies.