External Affairs minister Subramaniam Jaishankar on May 5, 2024 said that the Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) has never been out of India and that people were made to forget it.
Responding to a question on India’s plans for POJK during an event in Cuttack, Odisha, he said POJK has never been out of the country. It is part of this country. There is a resolution of the Indian Parliament that POJK is very much a part of India. He said that India didn’t tell Pakistan to vacate the region during the early years of independence sue to which the sorry state of affairs continued.
“When you have someone who is not a responsible custodian of the house, bahar se koi chori kar leta hai (someone steals from outside),” Jaishankar said. The External Affairs Minister said that the people were made to forget about the issue of POJK and it had been brought into the consciousness of the people again.
Notably, the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on May 5, 2024 said that there was no need for India to recapture POJK as the people living there would want to be a part of India. In an interview with a media agency, Singh said, “I think India will not have to do anything.
The way the ground situation has changed in Jammu and Kashmir, the way the region is witnessing economic progress and the way peace has returned there, I think demands will emerge from the people of POJK that they should merge with India. POJK was, is and will remain ours, he added.
He asserted that there has been significant improvement in the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir, he also said that assembly polls will take place in Jammu and Kashmir but did not give any timeline.
On May 3, 2024, Subramaniam Jaishankar also said that Article 370 must should have been abrogated a long time back in Jammu and Kashmir. It was a problem because the so long as the Article 370 continued in Jammu and Kashmir, a feeling of separatism of extremism, sometimes I would even say for violence, was created.
Jaishankar said that Article 370 was a temporary provision in the constitution, and it had to be removed. He said that Article 370 continued in Jammu and Kashmir as some people had a vested interests referring to anti-India elements like separatists and politicians of the erstwhile state.
