The provocation is that hosts Pakistan, while inviting speakers of all the state assemblies, didn’t invite presiding officers of two Houses of Jammu and Kashmir legislature, citing disputed nature of the territory and a 60-year old UN Security Council resolution.
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India and Pakistan have fought two wars over their competing claims to Kashmir and each administers part of it. Many Kashmiris want independence from India or a merger with Pakistan.
“We reviewed this issue and felt this was wrong”, Mahajan said after a meeting today with the Speakers.
“India will find it hard to prove before the global community that the “second Kasab” was actually sent by the Pakistani establishment, just as it hasn’t been able to prove before the world that the state was involved in sending Kasab across the border“, it says. She said J&K was an inseparable part of India and Pakistan’s decision was not acceptable.
Mahajan told media that all the state assemblies have backed the decision to boycott the Islamabad conference on the issue. He mentioned the meeting between Afghan government and Tehreek-e-Taliban Afghanistan arranged in Pakistan for reaching consensus in restoring peace and stability in Afghanistan; out of good hope that Pakistan has always had for its neighbor.
India on Friday announced repatriation of 16 Pakistani prisoners, out of which 13 were held in Jammu and Kashmir jails, along with nine fishermen.
Jammu and Kashmir Assembly and not invite its Speaker.
She said that it was also demanded that the venue from Pakistan for the said conference be also changed if India is to attend.
Pakistan has over the past year been raising the Kashmir issue at worldwide forum, and trying to push its agenda for a plebiscite in the state.
Pakistan has not yet responded to the August 23-24 dates proposed for the meeting between the NSAs of the two countries: Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz.
An editorial in the News worldwide said that just a day after New Delhi proposed to Pakistan that talks between the National Security Advisors of both countries could go ahead before the end of the month, “there has been further demonstration of aggression from India with firing by the BSF across the Sialkot Working Boundary…”
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He said the Pakistani troops opened fire first and the Indian troops “retaliated”.
