Pakistan’s PM criticizes Indian top court’s ‘politically motivated’ ruling on Kashmir

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Thursday criticized India’s Supreme Court for upholding New Delhi’s 2019 decision to scrap Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status, describing it as a “politically motivated” ruling.
A five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, responding to more than a dozen petitions against India revoking Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status in 2019, ruled on Monday that the region’s special status had been a “temporary provision” and removing it in 2019 was constitutionally valid.
Indian-administered Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority region, has been at the heart of more than 75 years of hostility with neighboring Pakistan since the birth of the two nations in 1947, when British colonial rule ended. Both countries rule Kashmir in part but claim it in full.
“I’m here to express solidarity with them [people of Kashmir] in the wake of a grave injustice,” Kakar said, speaking to Azad Kashmir’s Legislative Assembly.
“Three days ago, in a decision which was politically motivated rather than grounded in law, the Supreme Court of India validated the Indian government’s illegal and unilateral measures of August 2019.”
Kakar, who became the first caretaker prime minister to address the Azad Kashmir assembly, labelled the decision as an “unjust verdict,” referring to India as the “world’s largest hypocrisy.”
He said the Pakistani political leadership stood united to support Kashmiris in their right to self-determination.
He said Pakistan cannot remain indifferent to the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir.
“Jammu and Kashmir remains an important facet of Pakistan’s foreign policy,” Kakar said.
The dispute over the former princely state of Kashmir sparked the first two of three wars between India and Pakistan after independence in 1947. They fought a second in 1965, and a third, largely over what became Bangladesh, in 1971.