Pak has no right to cry foul!

Arun Joshi
Tribune News Service
Jammu, August 5

Pakistan has no right to cry foul, it is not only in illegal occupation of one-third of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, but had also made geographical changes at its whims, besides gifting a large chunk of the state land to China.

Kashmir is bleeding because of the terrorism sponsored by Pakistan, and one of the latest acts was the February 14 Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed in Kashmir. Pakistan premier Imran Khan’s beseeching of the US President Donald Trump to intervene and mediate in Kashmir was a clear departure from the spirit of bilateralism that could have found a meeting ground between India and Pakistan to resolve the issue. Today, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Khursheed while reflecting on the constitutional changes made by the Government of India (GoI) with regard to Jammu and Kashmir remarked, “No unilateral step by the GoI can change this disputed status as enshrined in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Now will this ever be acceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan.”

As such, Pakistan has no locus standi to speak on the issue, for it occupied one-third of the state’s territory by aggression in 1947-48 despite the fact that Maharaja Hari Singh, the last king of the state, had acceded the whole of the state of J&K to India in his instrument of accession signed on October 26, 1947.

The territory under its illegal control included Gilgit-Baltistan, and it changed the status of the territory through its two orders in 2009 and 2018 integrating the whole of the territory, once known as Northern Areas, into the administrative set-up of Pakistan. It had removed it from the PoK, what it fondly calls, “Azad Jammu and Kashmir” and the ministry of Kashmir.

The provocations and terror attacks in Kashmir had tested the patience and resolve of India for long.At the same time, its repeated chant of the international intervention to satisfy its domestic constituency were also articulated through the firepower that it used to kill and maim people, including aged, women and children, with its artillery shelling at the LoC.

Had Modi government wanted to make the changes earlier, it could have done that. In its first five-year stint, it had full majority and it lasted for five years. It was an ally of the Kashmir-centric party PDP, though they did break up later, it did not make any move to change the special status of the state. Now, it has done so because it cannot withstand the irrational noises and terror coming from across the border for long.

Had tested India’s patience for long

 The provocations and terror attacks in Kashmir had tested the patience and resolve of India for long. At the same time, its repeated chant of the international intervention to satisfy its domestic constituency were also articulated through the firepower that it used to kill and maim people, including aged, women and children, with its artillery shelling at the LoC