ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office on Tuesday rejected a comment made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a recent public rally in Gujarat where he said he had managed to “resolve” the Kashmir dispute by following the first home minister of his country Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Modi said that Patel made the merger of various princely states with India possible while making a veiled reference to the first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and criticizing him for mishandling the Kashmir issue.
Reacting to the development, the foreign office dismissed Modi’s “farcical contention” that he had somehow “resolved the Kashmir issue,” adding his statement was not only false and misleading but also reflected how “oblivious” the Indian leadership was to the ground realities in Kashmir.
It maintained that Jammu and Kashmir was an internationally recognized disputed region, the resolution of which had been on the agenda of the United Nations since 1948.
“Instead of making delusional statements about having resolved the dispute unilaterally, the Indian leadership must deliver on their commitments to the Kashmiris and to the world and ensure that the people of Kashmir are accorded their inalienable right to self-determination,” said the foreign office statement.
The Modi administration decided to revoke the special constitutional status of Kashmir in August 2019 while deciding to integrate the region with the rest of the Indian union.
In response, Pakistan downgraded its diplomatic relations with New Delhi while asking the Indian government to reverse its “illegal” action.
Pakistan also maintained India was striving to change the demographic realities in Kashmir where a majority population is Muslim.
“The only solution to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute lies in ensuring that the Kashmiris are allowed to exercise their right of self-determination through the democratic method of holding a UN-mandated free and impartial plebiscite as espoused in the relevant UNSC resolutions and as per the wishes of the Kashmiri people,” the foreign office said.
Modi told his party supporters in Gujarat that Patel “persuaded all the princely states to merge with India,” though “another person handled this one issue of Kashmir.”
“As I am following in the footsteps of Sardar Sahib, I have values of the land of Sardar and that was the reason I resolved the problem of Kashmir and paid true tributes to Sardar Patel,” he continued.
India and Pakistan have fought several wars over Kashmir since their independence in August 1947.
The two countries claim the region in full, but control only parts of it.
