Will hoist Tricolour in PoK, stand by our brothers there: India

Echoing PM’s aggression, MoS Jitendra Singh underscores need to draw global attention to atrocities by Pak forces; Baloch activists hail Modi’s strong warning

NEW DELHI: Continuing with its aggression against Pakistan on Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), India is trying to change the narrative by now talking about its plan to hoist the Tricolour in Muzaffarabad. Since the last several years, Pakistan has been able to create trouble in Jammu and Kashmir through state-sponsored terror groups and above all it ran an anti-India propaganda machinery on the international forum. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remark on PoK on Friday, the Centre is looking to beat Pakistan in its own game.

Echoing the PM’s view, junior minister in PMO Jitendra Singh on Saturday said it was India’s moral and national responsibility to stand by its brothers in PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan. “At the same time, to draw the attention of the world to the kind of human rights violation that is taking place in that region,” added Singh, a sitting LS MP from Jammu. He said that the actual culmination of the ‘Tiranga Yatra’ would be in Kotli, Muzaffarabad “when we succeed in hoisting the Tricolour of India in PoK”. His Cabinet colleague, Kiren Rijiju, Minister of State for Home Affairs, will also accompany him to lead the BJP’s Tiranga Yatra in J&K. The yatra is being organised by the BJP on August 15-22 as a symbol of social harmony and unity.

MP Jugal Kishore Sharma will accompany Singh in the yatra in the Jammu-Poonch Parliamentary constituency and both will cover the entire Jammu province, he said. Singh will begin on Saturday from Ghagwal in Hiranagar of Kathua district and go to Jammu, Kaul said, adding that Rijiju would go to Leh on Sunday along with local MP Thupstan Chhewang and CEC Sonam Dawa and district president Gonboo.

Meanwhile, prominent Balochistan activists, fighting for their rights and freedom from Pakistan, have hailed Modi who had warned that atrocities committed by Pakistan against people in Balochistan and PoK will stand exposed.

Activists like Neela Qadri and Hammal Haider Baloch, a representative of the Baloch National Movement, welcomed the PM’s strong statement against Pakistan during the all party meeting here on Friday, and expressed hope that he would raise the issue during the upcoming UN session in September.

“We, the people of Balochistan, Pakistan and PoK thank you (PM Modi) for your support. We are suffering. We hope the PM will raise our issue in the UN,” Qadri, the World Baloch Women’s Forum president, said.

Qadri is among the ranks of prominent Balochi activists who have repeatedly called on India to intervene in Balochistan, as it did in the case of Bangladesh in 1971.

At the all party meeting on the Kashmir issue, the PM had warned Pakistan from meddling in the internal affairs of India. “Time has now come that Pakistan will have to answer to the world about the atrocities being committed on people in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,” he had said.

Lauding Modi’s warning to Pakistan, Hammel Haider, who has been critical of the atrocities by Pakistani forces against the people in the region, said it was the first time ever that an Indian PM had expressed his wish to support the Baloch people. It is a very crucial move from Modi, he noted. “The Baloch people share common interests with India. We are secular and believe in democratic principles. Pakistan butchers Sindhi political activists and supports religious groups which are a threat to the world,” Haider said.

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