(Left) Defence Minister Rajnath Singh (Right) Foreign Minister S Jaishanker
There has been an “alarming surge in provocative statements from Indian leaders asserting unwarranted claims’’ over Pakistan-Occupied Jammu Kashmir (POJK). Pakistan rejected all such claims, Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in Islamabad on Friday while addressing a weekly press conference.
Baloch did not mention any specific statement to pinpoint her claim regarding what she termed as “provocative statements’’. However, it is widely being interpreted as based on statements of facts given by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in the last week. Incidentally, Singh had said some days ago that “people of POJK will soon demand to be with Bharat’’. He had said that his assessment was based on the extraordinary pace of development that Jammu & Kashmir has witnessed in the past few years.
It bears mention here that the whole of POJK is very backward in terms of infrastructure development. There is not a single functional airport in the whole of POJK, and people have to go to Islamabad or Lahore to take flights within Pakistan or to go abroad. The supply of electricity is very erratic, and there are no irrigation facilities in most parts. This despite the fact that Mangla Dam (in Mirpur area of POJK) is one of the largest dams in POJK, but it serves the neighbouring Punjab province of Pakistan. Even the electricity generated in POJK is exported to other areas, and locals languish in darkness.
In some interviews, S Jaishankar, who leads the MEA, said that Bharat “will never accept that POJK is not a part of India’’. Earlier, Iran and Pakistan had issued a joint statement at the end of Iranian President Raisi’s three-day visit to Pakistan in which there was a mention of Jammu & Kashmir. The MEA had promptly responded, saying it had taken up the issue with Iranian authorities.
In the joint statement, Iran and Pakistan said that there was a need to resolve the long standing issue through “dialogue and peaceful means, in accordance with international law’’. However, for the past five decades, after the signing of the Shimla Agreement, India has maintained that it was a “bilateral issue’’ in which no third party had any role whatsoever.
It is a matter of record that the whole of Jammu & Kashmir became a part of India on October 26, 1947 after Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession. As such, all territories of the erstwhile state that are presently with Pakistan have been clearly designated “illegally occupied territories of Bharat’’. This official nomenclature given by Bharat for Pakistan Occupied Jammu Kashmir (POJK) and COTL (China Occupied Tibet & Ladakh) has gained wide currency during the last decade.
The Pakistan FO spokesperson also alleged that the statements by senior Indian leaders were “fuelled by hyper-nationalism, and this inflammatory rhetoric poses a grave threat to regional peace’’. She added that “Indian politicians should cease their reckless practice of dragging Pakistan into India’s populist public discourse’’.
Baloch claimed that “despite India’s rhetoric and assertions, J&K remains an internationally recognised disputed territory’’. Referring to UN resolutions, Baloch said any final settlement of J&K can only be according to them. It needs to be mentioned here that the UN resolutions had Part I, Part II and Part III, each to follow one another chronologically. Part I was about a ceasefire, and Part II asked Pakistan to vacate all territories of J&K which it has failed to do till date. This had led to an impasse, and the UN resolutions lost their relevance as early as August 1948 itself.
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