External affairs minister S Jaishankar said that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) remains an inseparable part of India and the region “has never been out” of India. Jaishankar said that people were “made to forget about it”.
Jaishankar’s responses came during a Q&A session during an event in Odisha’s Cuttack where he was asked about India’s plans for PoK. “PoK has never been out of this country. It is part of this country. There is a resolution of the Indian Parliament that PoK is very much a part of India,” Jaishankar said.
“When you have someone who is not a responsible custodian of the house, bahar se koi chori kar leta hai (someone steals from outside). India did not tell Pakistan to vacate the region during the early years of independence due to which the sorry state of affairs continued,” S Jaishankar said.
“(People) made to forget about the issue of PoK (but it has been brought into the consciousness of the people again),” he further added.
His remarks came shortly after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said that there was no need for India to capture PoK as its people, on their own, would want to be part of India during an exclusive interview with news agency PTI.
“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 people of PoK that they should merge with India,” Singh told the news agency.
“PoK was, is, and will remain ours,” he added.
The external affairs minister also pointed out that Article 370 should have been abrogated much earlier in Jammu and Kashmir.
“It was a problem because so long as Article 370 continued, in Jammu and Kashmir, a feeling of separatism, of extremism, sometimes I would even say support for violence, was created,” he said.
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