Reclaiming PoK next on Centre’s agenda: Minister

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 21

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said that retrieving Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) was next on the agenda of the government after the abrogation of Article 370.

He was speaking at an event to mark Mirpur Balidan Diwas, dedicated to displaced persons of PoJK.

It was said that Article 370 could never be abrogated, but PM Modi’s leadership made that possible… the resolve to retrieve PoJK will also be accomplished. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister

The minister also said the leadership that had the capacity and political will to abrogate Article 370 also had the capacity to retrieve PoJK from the illegal occupation of Pakistan. Singh said the Partition of the Indian subcontinent was the “greatest tragedy in the history of mankind”.

“While India suffered the tragedy of Partition, Jammu and Kashmir suffered the second tragedy of losing a part of the erstwhile state to illegal occupation of Pakistan. It was always said that Article 370 could never be abrogated, but PM Modi’s leadership made that possible. In the same way, the resolve to retrieve PoJK will also be accomplished,” he said.

Reclaiming PoJK was not only a political and national agenda, but also a responsibility towards human rights defence because “our brothers in PoJK are living in inhuman conditions”, he said.

Singh, whose brother Devender Rana, former political adviser to NC vice-president Omar Abdullah, recently joined the BJP, said then Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel took over the responsibility of annexing over 560 princely states at the time of Independence and successfully accomplished the task.

“Sardar Patel was kept out of Jammu and Kashmir because PM Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to handle it at his own level. Even after Pakistan attacked J&K in the autumn of 1947, Nehru was hesitant to send forces to J&K. It was only after an empathic intervention by Sardar Patel that the first contingent of the Sikh Regiment landed in Srinagar,” Jitendra Singh said.

Former PM Nehru deviated just when the Indian forces were about to retrieve the entire territory of Jammu and Kashmir captured by Pakistan, he said.

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