Mumbai: Amid the protests in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday reiterated India’s stand saying “one day we will end the illegal occupation of the PoK and the PoK will join with India.”
“These days, a lot of things are going on in PoK. You must have seen some incidents happening there. We are very clear that PoK is a part of India; it was always part of India, and it will be part of India,” EAM said during a media interaction at a seminar on Indian Capital Markets ‘Roadmap for Viksit Bharat’ at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Mumbai.
“And we definitely have this intention that one day we will end the illegal occupation of the PoK and the PoK will join with India. Now you see that the opposition is in the opposite direction,” he added.
The minister also questioned “who wanted to run Article 370, who was interested in it” referring to the criticism after Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, was abrogated by the BJP-led government in August 2019.
“If I talk about the record, then in the last five years, one of our great achievements was on Article 370. And we will also say that the NDA’s record and the NDA’s thinking, the Modi government’s thinking is that how to integrate Kashmir with the country, how to further develop Kashmir. On the other hand, you see who wanted to run Article 370, who was interested in it. So this is also a very clear choice in front of the country,” he said.
EAM also commented on former J&K chief minister Farooq Abdullah remarks that “they (Pakistan) are also not wearing bangles” and will attack us, saying that leaders are so afraid of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons that they believe India should not talk about PoK with Pakistan.
“Farooq Abdullah reminds us not to talk about PoK because Pakistan has nuclear weapons. We are proud of India’s nuclear weapons. On the contrary, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons seem to be more important. If it is Manish Shankar Iyer or Farooq Abdullah, they are so afraid of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons that they think that we should not talk about PoK. So I will say that whatever is the issue of security, we are on the side of CAA, our intention is to take CAA forward. They are the prisoners of the vote bank,” he said.
“And from the beginning, the minorities who had to come to India from their neighbouring country, they were never worried about them. They never thought about the injustice done to them,” he added.
