India claims situation in IOK normal

ISLAMABAD: India has ironically claimed that situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) is normal which is interestingly under sever curfew for more than two hundred days and the whole population is under siege. The Narendra Modi government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on 5 August 2019, turning it into two union territories, and imposed the region’s longest lockdown.

Pakistan has since raised the matter on multiple occasions in an attempt to globally corner India.

Speaking at the 43rd session of the UN Human Rights Council which is being held in Geneva in Switzerland from February 24 to March 20, Vikas Swarup, Secretary (west), the ministry of external affairs of India said that scrapping of Articles 370 and 35 (A) last August was meant to “strengthen the integration of the state, including to give fullest play to representative government from the grassroots level upward”. He said the move was intended to ensure socioeconomic development of IOK and that the measures taken by the government are “already showing positive results”.

“Despite Pakistan’s best efforts — over decades — to destabilise this state through externally-instigated terror and a campaign of canards and untruth, the situation on the ground is quite normal,” he said. Most of the temporary restrictions were imposed by the government “solely to ensure safety of the people from Pakistani-trained terrorist attacks”. “Pakistan also felt it necessary to offer advice and warnings about the situation within India. India is a nation where democracy, including the right to protest, is vibrantly and noisily celebrated every day, where diversity has been a way of life since times immemorial and where dignity of every human is protected by a robust constitutional framework,” he said. Pakistan has been trying to internationalise the Kashmir issue but India has asserted that the abrogation of Article 370 was its "internal matter".