PoK will remain in Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir with India: Farooq Abdullah
Srinagar: Former Union minister and president of Opposition National Conference (NC), Dr. Farooq Abdullah, on Friday stirred up a hornet's nest by saying that Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir will remain with Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir will remain with India and people should accept it as a statement of realism.
"PoK is in Pakistan and will remain (there); Jammu and Kashmir is in India and will remain (here). We need to understand this," he asserted. Mr. Abdullah also said that war was not the solution, as people only lose their lives in it and that “Dialogue is the only option."
The NC president who served as Jammu and Kashmir’s chief minister thrice said, “Let us be practical. The (then) Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee told me that when he visited Pakistan, he gave the suggestion that Pakistan should keep PoK, but they did not agree. But now if we start talks with Pakistan again, they are ready on this formula.” He further said that India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars on Kashmir since their independence from Britain in 1947 but the ground realities did not change as PoK could not be salvaged in 68 years.
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Reacting to his statement, Union minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Dr. Jitendra Singh, said, “How can we forget in 1994 there was a unanimous resolution passed in Parliament on how to deal with Pakistan's claim on Kashmir? The position of the government has been very clear on this issue... there are no two ways about it."
The resolution passed unanimously in Parliament on February 22, 1994 had said, “The State of Jammu & Kashmir has been, is and shall be an integral part of India and any attempts to separate it from the rest of the country will be resisted by all necessary means”. It demanded “Pakistan must vacate the areas of the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, which they have occupied through aggression”.
In Muzaffarabad, PoK premier Chaudhry Abdul Majid said the held territory was the “base camp of Kashmir liberation struggle”. He asserted, “The people and government of Azad Jammu-Kashmir (AJK) will never leave their brethren in Indian occupied Kashmir alone in their struggling for right to self-determination.”
Mr. Abdullah also defended Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, saying the controversy surrounding him following his statement on intolerance issue was "propaganda" and that the actor never said that he wanted to leave the country. "When did he say that he wants to leave the country? I was myself sitting there. It is a wrong propaganda against him. He never said that he wants to leave India, he (Aamir) said that India is my country. I am born from this soil and I will die in this soil," Mr. Abdullah told reporters in Jammu on the sidelines of a function held to commemorate the death anniversary of veteran Congress leader Girdhari Lal Dogra.
The NC leader asserted that Indian Muslims were proud to be Indians and nobody wants to go to Pakistan. "You should ask this to the Governor of Assam who is sitting there and making such statements. Nobody is ready to go to Pakistan from here. We are Indians and Indian Muslim is no less than anyone else as we are proud of being Indians," he said.
He added that God did not ask the people where they want to be born, so we have to accept everybody irrespective of the religion he was born in. "We are proud to be Indians. If I was born in Jawaharlal Nehru's house and Indira Gandhi was born in Sheikh Abdullah's house but God did not ask us where we wanted to be born," he said.
Meanwhile, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah expressed surprise over the treatment given by the TV news channels to his father Farooq Abdullah's views on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
"I'm amazed that the channels are treating my father's views as though they are something he's never said before," Omar wrote on Twitter.
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