POK was, is & will be part of India: EAM Jaishankar

Mumbai, May 13: Amid the intensified protest in POK, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday reiterated India's stand on merging the illegally occupied region and said that “one day we will end the illegal occupation of the POJK and the POJK will join with India.”

“These days, a lot of things are going on at the POJK. You must have seen some incidents happening there. Now, Modi government, we are very clear on this. Parliament's resolution, we are very clear that POJK is a part of India. It is part of India, it was always part of India, it will be part of India,” EAM said during a media interaction at a seminar on Indian Capital Markets ‘ Roadmap for Viksit Bharat' at the National Stock Exchange ( NSE) in Mumbai.

“And we definitely have this intention. that one day we will end the illegal occupation of the POJK and the POJK will join with India. Now you see that the opposition is in the opposite direction,” he added.

The minister also questioned “who wanted to run Article 370, who was interested in it” referring to the criticism after Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, was abrogated by the BJP- led government in August 2019.

“If I talk about the record, then in the last five years, one of our great achievements was on Article 370. And we will also say that the NDA'S record

and the NDA'S thinking, the Modi government's thinking is that how to integrate Kashmir with the country, how to further develop Kashmir. On the other hand, you see who wanted to run Article 370, who was interested in it. So this is also a very clear choice in front of the country,” he said.