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Rajiv Gandhi’s concerns over formation of Kashmir committee in UK made it ‘fade away’: Report

After former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi raised concerns over the formation of a ‘Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir’ in London, with his British counterpart Margaret Thatcher, it was made to ‘fade away’, reported the Hindustan Times. 

The report said that classified documents released by National Archives on Friday demonstrate the tenuous nature of such ‘committees’ formed by UK-based groups politically opposed to India, comprising MPs whose constituencies have many voters of Pakistan origin.

The committee objected to by Gandhi was formed following the visit to the UK of “a prominent Kashmiri from the Pakistani side of the cease-fire line”, the Foreign Office told 10 Downing Street on May 7, 1985. It “has no formal status”, the note adds.

The four MPs on the ‘committee’ were Gary Waller, Peter Thurnham, Roy Galley (all Conservative) and Barry Sheerman (Labour).

The note says: “We do not know how active the Committee is likely to prove: one of four members, Mr Galley, has confided to us that he is a reluctant member who joined because of the number of Kashmiris in his constituency. We suspect the same may be true of the other members”.

An investigation revealed that the ‘committee’ was formed by Thurnham’s research assistant, “who wrote to 60 MPs on Mr Thurnham’s stationary without the latter’s permission”. When the MP discovered this, he wrote to the MPs that his assistant “had gone further than he had been authorised”.

A note of May 28, 1985 says: “Mr Thurnham has said that, so far as he is concerned, the Committee no longer exists”.

The British high commission in New Delhi was told to inform Gandhi’s private secretary that the ‘committee’ was the “work of an over-active research assistant rather than MP: it was never formally constituted and it can now be regarded as non-existent”.

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