To retrieve Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and make it a part of India is very much on the Government’s agenda, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on May 1.
In a meeting with London-based Jammu and Kashmir-origin students and social groups, he said after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over, he sought to “correct several anomalies of the past that were the legacy of successive governments since 1947”.
The Minister said that the Abrogation of Article 370 has created a sense of belonging among the people of Jammu and Kashmir and provided them with equal rights similar to their counterparts in India.
As a result of the steps, initiatives and measures taken by Narendra Modi, the stature of India rose globally and has left little ambiguity as far as the Indian position in Jammu and Kashmir, which is an integral part of India.
In the year 2019, the Government abrogated the article that gave the special status of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcated it into two Union Territories (Jammu and Kashmir) and Ladakh.
PM Narendra Modi will be remembered for bringing “justice to refugees from Pakistan settled in J&K and to the daughters of the former state who were deprived of the constitutional rights of citizenship and owning property,” the minister of state for personnel said, referring to Government’s decisions of 2019.
According to an official statement issued in the Jammu and Kashmir Study Centre of London, the esteemed Science and Technology Minister said, “If only the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had allowed Sardar Vallabhai Patel to handle J&K in the same way he was handling other princely states of India, today the part of Jammu and Kashmir that is illegally occupied by Pakistan would have been a part of India, and the issue of POJK would never have risen,”
“However, he said, it is very much on the agenda of the government led by Prime Minister Modi and the BJP as a political party to retrieve the illegally occupied PoJK from the control of Pakistan and restore it back to India,” it said.
Different groups that interacted with Jitendra Singh informed him of their recent activities in uniting groups of Indian Origin People against Anti-Indian forces, the statement said.
According to Jitendra Singh, the time has come to create “our own narrative so that false narratives created by our adversaries do not gain the upper hand.”
Under PM Modi, the world is ready to listen to India’s viewpoint, and the message that nobody can challenge or harm the integrity and sovereignty of India must go loud and clear across all the sections, he said.
The meeting with Jitendra Singh lasted nearly an hour and consisted of people engaged in different work areas and hailing from numerous regions of Jammu and Kashmir.
Groups that took part in the meeting included the representatives of the J&K Study Center branch in London—members of Dogra organisations of Jammu and Kashmir and Kashmiri Pandit activist groups.
The statement added that Jitendra Singh appreciated how these groups contributed to correcting the false and negative narrative about India, especially about Jammu and Kashmir, with some “vested interests” and stood up to challenge of anti -Indian forces in the United Kingdom (UK).
The main office of the Jammu Study Centre is in New Delhi.
