Kolkata: Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said that the Congress is consciously underplaying a unanimous Parliament resolution on Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) for vote bank politics.
He said the resolution was passed in 1994 under the Congress government headed by the then-Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao.
“At a time when elections are going on, Congress leaders feel that any statement claiming that PoJK is a part of India may not go down well with certain sections of their vote bank, and, therefore, they are ready to go to any extent to polarise the electorate even if it is at the cost of national integration,” said Singh, the Union Minister of State for Personnel.
Congress is consciously underplaying the unanimous resolution on PoJK in Parliament, he added.
Singh said that when Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and other senior BJP leaders reiterated that PoJK is a part of Jammu & Kashmir and thus a part of India, it is the Congress that finds fault with such statements and tries to either “ignore or underplay” it.
Singh said that on February 22, 1994, both Houses of Parliament had unanimously adopted the resolution, which was also supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which clearly stated that PoJK was a part of the state of Jammu & Kashmir and was under illegal occupation of Pakistan.
“It was also stated that if at all there is an outstanding issue between India and Pakistan, it is only as to how to retrieve the part of Jammu & Kashmir which continues to be under illegal occupation of Pakistan and to restore it back to India as a part of the territory of Jammu & Kashmir as it existed in 1947,” he said.
Singh, who is in West Bengal to campaign for the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls on May 20, also attacked the state government over corruption.
