NEW DELHI: The BJP tried to downplay Pakistan Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz’s remarks that Kashmir was the central issue.
The ruling party said it would go by the joint statement made by Prime Minster Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.
The BJP’s central point of the joint statement was that terrorism in all forms should be checked. It said such statements were meant for the local audiences.
“A lot of statements coming from others are also possibly intended to address their domestic constituencies. As far as we are concerned, the discussion, engagement will largely happen on the lines of the joint statement,” party spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said.
The BJP reacted to Aziz’s comments who said that the talks between the two countries could not take place without Kashmir being on the agenda.
Within days of promising to speed all terrorism-related trials in their country, Aziz said that Pakistan would need “more evidence and information” from India on the Mumbai attack case.
Rao said the Ufa joint statement talked about the engagement of officials of both sides at different levels.
Lok Sabha MP and former Home Secretary R K Singh said, “The entire 26/11 conspiracy was planned in Pakistan, we have provided enough proof to the country in the past.”
Singh went on to say that the Pakistan Government was controlled by its spy agency.
“However, we will stick to the Modi-Sharif joint statement on expediting the 26/11 trial,” he said.
“Pakistan’s notorious spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) knows that if a proper investigation is done in the Mumbai attacks, then many of its officers will be indicted,” he said.
Meanwhile, a four-member BJP committee constituted to enquire into these recent cases of lawlessness in Uttar Pradesh started it study in the state. The team headed by MP Ashwani Chaubey reached Barabanki on Monday, where it will meet the family of the girl who was set ablaze inside a police station last week. The team’s mandate is to study several cases of high-handedness and violence in the state and prepare a report. The BJP plans to make the Samajwadi Government’s “poor record” on law and order as an issue in the coming days.