Jammu Kashmir belongs to us: India asserts at UN meeting

To whom does Jammu Kashmir belong to? India or Pakistan? The two nations have been fighting over the rights of the state.

India has asserted that Jammu Kashmir belongs to her, snubbing Pakistan at the at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and no “empty rhetoric” from Islamabad will change this fact.

The topic came up during the during General Debate on the responsibility to Protect and the Prevention of Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes against Humanity.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, at the discussion, said people in Kashmir were among the victims of “egregious crimes” such as killings and mass-blinding, to which India’s First Secretary Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu rejected Pakistan’s claims.

“While we are having this serious debate for the first time in a decade on an issue that is of importance to all of us, we have witnessed that one delegation has, yet again, misused this platform to make an unwarranted reference to the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir” said Bayyapu, who exercised the Right of Reply.

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Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu said such cynical attempts by Pakistan to raise the Kashmir issue in the UN have failed in the past and do not find any resonance in the UN body. “I would like to place on record and reiterate that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral and inalienable part of India. No amount of empty rhetoric from Pakistan will change this reality,” he said.

Watch the VIDEO uploaded by ANI

#WATCH: J&K is an integral & inalienable part of India. No amount of empty rhetoric by Pakistan will change this reality: Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu, First Secretary during right to reply at United Nations General Assembly pic.twitter.com/vLmIYK5Eeb

— ANI (@ANI) June 26, 2018

Pakistan earlier this month had said that the reference to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in a UN report on alleged human rights violations should in no way be construed to create a “false sense of equivalence” with Kashmir.

On a related note, the UN, earlier this month, had released its first-ever report on alleged human rights violation in Kashmir and PoK and demanded an international probe into it. India termed the document as faulty.