NEW DELHI: India’s Hindu nationalist government is ending a decades-long policy of offering discounted airfares to Muslims embarking on the hajj pilgrimage, it announced Tuesday, reports AFP.

The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party has accused its opponents in the Congress party—who introduced the hajj assistance scheme in the 1950s—of trying to woo Muslim voters through handouts. Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the government wants to assist India’s roughly 175 million Muslims without resorting to political “appeasement” along religious lines.

“Development with dignity is what we believe in,” he said in announcing the decision to scrap the travel subsidy.

He said the cash saved from the scheme would be channelled into economic opportunities and education for Muslims, who make up about 14 percent of India’s 1.25 billion people.

Every year more than 100,000 pilgrims travel from India to the holy site of Mecca in Saudi Arabia for a spiritual journey that every faithful Muslim strives to make at least once in their lifetime.