New Delhi: India has termed as “farcical” a resolution passed by the Pakistan National Assembly on the country’s delimitation exercise in Jammu and Kashmir.
“We categorically reject the farcical resolution…,” the Ministry of External Affairs said Tuesday.
In a caustic statement, the MEA said Pakistan had no locus standi to “pronounce on or interfere in matters that are internal to India, including Indian territories under Pakistan’s illegal and forcible occupation”.
Pakistan’s Parliament last Thursday unanimously passed a resolution denouncing India’s delimitation exercise – a regular process of demarcation of boundaries of parliamentary and assembly constituencies based on the Census.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who tabled the resolution, said the Indian move was aimed at artificially altering the electoral strength of the Muslim majority in Jammu and Kashmir.
The MEA sharply retorted to this and said the delimitation exercise was democratic and based on the principles of extensive stakeholder consultation and participation.
The delimitation panel, formed in March 2020, notified its final report on 6 May giving six additional assembly seats to the Jammu region and one to the Kashmir Valley and bringing areas of Rajouri and Poonch under the Anantnag parliamentary seat. Jammu division will now have 43 assembly seats and Kashmir 47 in the 90-member House.
The MEA also took a dig at the political situation in Pakistan – last Prime Minister Imran Khan did not survive a no-confidence vote – and said: “It is regrettable that instead of putting their own house in order, the leadership in Pakistan continues to interfere in India’s internal affairs and engage in baseless and provocative anti-India propaganda”.
India told Pakistan to immediately stop anti-India, cross-border terrorism and shut down its infrastructure of terror.
Also read: India rejects ‘unwarranted’ OIC comments on J-K delimitation