NEW YORK: In what can put the Congress in a tough spot, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday once again quoted the party to peddle his anti-India rhetoric during his UNGA address.
"The previous Congress Home Minister gave a statement that in RSS camps, terrorists are being trained," Khan said at the world body which is deliberating on climate change and inclusion in its 74th session.
Khan continued his vile narrative against India over New Delhi's move to revoke Article 370 and also flouted the time limit set for the address of world leaders.
This is not the first time that Khan has quoted the Indian political party while launching an attack on New Delhi.
"For a start, they have to lift the curfew, that's the beginning. Even the Congress party in India has commented that poor people have been shut inside for 50 days. No one knows what's happening with the political prisoners... (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi has boxed himself in a blind alley," Khan had told reporters at a press conference here on the sidelines of the 74th UNGA session.
Earlier this month, the opening pages of a leaked Pakistan's dossier on Jammu and Kashmir contained the statements made by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370.
"It has been 20 days since the people of Jammu and Kashmir had their freedom and civil liberties curtailed. Leaders of the Opposition and Press got a taste of draconian administration and brute force unleashed on people of Jammu and Kashmir when we tried to visit Srinagar," Gandhi had been quoted as saying in the pages.
Adding insult to injury, Pakistan's Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari last month wrote a letter to 18 UN Special Procedures mandate on the Kashmir issue. In her letter, Mazari had claimed that Gandhi noted that people are dying in Jammu and Kashmir.
Amidst this, Gandhi had clarified his stance and hit out at Pakistan for instigating violence in Jammu and Kashmir and asserted that matters related to the region are India's internal issues with no room for interference by Islamabad.
The Congress, too, reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir was, is, and shall always remain a part of India.