Jammu & Kashmir

Nehru should not have taken Kashmir conflict to UN, says GoI minister

An armed forces personnel stands deployed in Srinagar. [FPK File Photo/Zainab]

New Delhi: The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during a budget session for Jammu Kashmir in the Rajya Sabha blamed the country’s former Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru for internationalising the Kashmir conflict by taking it to the United Nations.

In a statement, she said that “this issue shouldn’t have gone to a global forum, it is an Indian issue, The Indian Express report said, quoting her further saying, “We could’ve handled it and we are handling it and showing the difference now.”

The “neighbouring country is misusing the internationalisation of the Kashmir issue even today,” she added.

Responding to Sitharaman, Congress MP Anand Sharma said that India had not accepted the proposal of a plebiscite and that the matter in the United Nations was stopping the military conflict.

“There were elected governments in the state of Jammu Kashmir,” he said.

“Not only that, we fought wars and we had made it very clear repeatedly, and this has been India’s consistent position and Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh are an integral part of India”, multiple reports quoted Sharma as saying.

However, Sitharaman criticised the Congress for questioning the abrogation of Article 370 and quoted Prime Minister Nehru’s reply in Parliament in 1963 that “Article 370 is part of a certain transitional provisional arrangement. It is not a permanent part of the Constitution”.

“For 70 years that transitional arrangement remained and when we removed it, you should have gone by what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had said in 1963 and supported it,” she told the Congress members.

Meanwhile, she rebutted the opposition’s charge that the BJP had shared the responsibility for the failure to check the migration of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 as it was supporting the then V P Singh-led government at the Centre.

During the discussion, the Congress party targeted the BJP, saying it was supporting the V P Singh-led government at the Centre in 1990 when Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave the Valley after they were targeted by militants.

She also listed “seven major events” or killings of Hindus by militants in 1989 along with the related FIR numbers.

While she was referring to the killings of 1989, opposition members asked her to focus on the replies on Budget, reported The First Post.

In a response to it, she said that the speeches of opposition members were focused on the movie” The Kashmir Files” instead of on the Budget, therefore, she has all rights to reply on all issues.

 

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