Retrieving PoJK very much on government’s agenda: Union Minster Jitendra Singh
New Delhi, May 1
Union Minister Jitendra Singh today asserted that to retrieve Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and make it a part of India is very much on the agenda of the government and the ruling BJP.
Speaking at an interactive session with London-based J&K-origin students and social groups, the Minister said after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over, he sought to “correct several anomalies of the past that were the legacy of successive governments since 1947”.
Singh said that if only the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had allowed the then Home Minister Sardar Patel to handle J&K the same manner he was handling other princely states of India, “today the part of J&K which is illegally occupied by Pakistan would have been part of India and the issue of Pakistan occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) would have never risen”.
He then went on to add: “However, it is very much on the agenda of the government led by Prime Minister Modi and the BJP as a political party to retrieve the illegally occupied PoJK from the control of Pakistan and restore it back to India.”
The Minister, who has been on an official visit to the UK, noted that the abrogation of Article 370 has created a sense of belonging among the people of J&K and given them equal rights vis-a-vis their counterparts in the rest of the country.
In 2019, the central government had abrogated the article, which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, and re-organised it into two Union Territories (UTs) of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
PM Modi would be remembered for having brought “justice to refugees from Pakistan settled in J&K and to the daughters of the UT, who were deprived of their constitutional rights of citizenship and owning property”, the Ministry of Personnel quoting Singh said in a statement.
The Minister said as a result of the corrective measures adopted by PM Modi, India’s stature has risen globally, and there is no ambiguity left as far as India’s position about J&K is concerned, which is, it is an integral part of the Indian Union.
