Jaitley slams PM on Pak policy

In his latest Facebook post, Arun Jaitley said, “Since the Prime Minister, for the first time, informed the nation that a resolution on Kashmir was almost agreed to, it is eminently desirable that he takes the nation into confidence of what the specifics he had in mind about the failed solution. Even for history to make assessment of Prime Minister’s tenure, these details would be of immense help.”

Arun Jaitley said it was for the first time that the Prime Minister revealed that secret envoys from India and Pakistan had almost arrived at a meeting to resolve the conflict on Kashmir. When a breakthrough appeared in sight, the then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had to make way for other leaders and the agreement got blocked. A few years ago when Musharraf was living in exile in London he had given a similar indication.

Arun Jaitley said, “I have always believed that the Nehruvian vision of giving a separate status to Jammu & Kashmir was a flawed one. The journey of the past 67 years has been from separate status towards separatism. The Congress stands for separate status, the National Conference advocates pre-1953 status, the PDP talks of self-rule, the separatist’s talk of Azadi. Jaitley said each one of these is intended to dilute India’s sovereignty. Their intention is to weaken the constitutional and political link between Jammu & Kashmir and the rest of the country.

The stated position of India has been very clear, he pointed out. Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part of India. In 1994, Parliament had passed a unanimous resolution asserting that PoK was an integral part of Indian Territory. India firmly believes that no third party intervention in Kashmir is permissible. Pakistan, on the other hand, has an unfinished agenda on Kashmir, he said. It has not reconciled to Kashmir being integral to India’s sovereignty. It has used warfare and terrorism to achieve this end, he said.

Pakistan, he said, had been advocating an interim resolution on Kashmir, which comprised of several unacceptable measures. These included maintenance of territorial status quo, demilitarization in Kashmir, dilution of the Line of Control for allowing free movement of people and goods, a tripartite joint mechanism to take decisions about Jammu & Kashmir for a specified period pending which a final solution would be found. Some Pakistani observers and Kashmiri groups also spoke about the currency of the two countries to be a valid tender in Jammu & Kashmir.

“I do not know if any or all of these were a subject matter of the almost arrived at resolution to the Kashmir problem. I hope the truth is otherwise. I further hope that I do not have to wait for the memoirs of the Prime Minister to know”.