India Haj Pilgrims Fell To Zero, Then Partly Recovered

The MEA Dashboard (meadashboard.gov.in) is the official data portal maintained by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Government of India. It publishes administrative and consular services statistics across key domains handled by MEA and its overseas missions.

Key characteristics of the source:

• Passports: Annual counts of passports issued by each State/UT's Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) network, plus India totals for PSK-issued and Mission-issued (abroad) passports separately
• Passport Sewa Kendras: Number of operational PSKs per State/UT per year
• Passport issuance time: All-India average turnaround time in days
• OCI Cards: Annual Overseas Citizen of India cards issued (national total)
• Visas: Annual visa grants split by type (Regular and e-Visa) and the number of countries covered under the e-Visa scheme
• Pilgrims: Annual facilitation counts for Haj, Kailash Mansarovar, and Sikh pilgrims to Pakistan
• e-Migrate Portal: Annual emigration clearances issued and new employer registrations on the eMigrate system
• Mortal Remains: Annual counts of mortal remains repatriated to India from abroad

Data is primarily annual and national-level, with state-level breakdowns available for passports issued and PSK counts. Most series cover approximately 2014–2025.

Data Processing

• Data extracted from the MEA Dashboard's internal JSON API, structured as page-wise trend blocks
• State names normalised to TheMapsDaily region IDs
• Running-total leak detection applied to passport state data, correcting a known source bug where certain years carry cumulative rather than annual counts
• Partial 2026 data (through March only) excluded to avoid misleading annual comparisons
• India passport total sourced from the MEA-published national figure; PSK India total computed by summing state rows
• Passports issued by domestic PSKs and by Indian missions abroad tracked as separate series