Pakistan rejects 'fabricated' Indian assertions over Gilgit-Baltistan

FO says New Delhi has no locus standi in the decision of making G-B a province of Pakistan

Pakistan on Tuesday categorically rejected India’s “unwarranted and irresponsible remarks” over its decision of granting full constitutional rights and holding elections in Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B).

The federal government has decided to elevate G-B to the status of a full-fledged province with all constitutional rights, including its representation in the Senate and the National Assembly, Minister Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan Affairs Ali Amin Gandapur had announced earlier this month.

Gandapur said that Prime Minister Imran Khan would soon visit the region and make the formal announcement in this connection.

The Indian External Affairs Ministry in a statement earlier today had claimed that the entire union territories of Jammu and Kashmir including G-B are an external part of India.

“India has no locus standi on the issue — legal, moral or historical. The regurgitation of false and fabricated claims by India can neither change the facts nor divert attention from India's illegal actions and perpetration of the worst human rights violations in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK),” Foreign Office responded in a statement.

For over 72 years, it said, India has been in illegal and inhuman occupation of IIOJK. However, despite the incessant brutalisation of the Kashmiri people at the hands of Indian occupation forces, the indigenous Kashmiri resistance movement has only become stronger, it added.

The FO also called upon India to immediately end its illegal and forcible occupation of parts of disputed region and comply with its international obligations by allowing the Kashmiris to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination “through a free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations as enshrined in the relevant UNSC Resolutions”.