NEW DELHI, Feb 22 : The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru lost Pakistan occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) in haste, otherwise Pakistan would not have been able to continue its illegal occupation over a large area of Jammu & Kashmir for over seven decades.
This was stated here today by Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh while addressing a programme to mark the “Sankalp Divas” commemorating the Parliament resolution on J&K which was unanimously passed this day on 22nd February 1994.
Dr Jitendra Singh alleged that without consulting his Home Minister Sardar Patel or taking his cabinet colleagues into confidence, Prime Minister Nehru rushed to the Akashwani Bhawan to declare unilateral ceasefire, precisely at a time when the Pakistani Forces were retreating and the Indian Army was about to retrieve the part of Jammu & Kashmir captured by them, if only they were given just about two more days to carry out the operation.
Observing that the saga of PoJK is punctuated with a series of hasty decisions and missed opportunities by the successive Congress governments, Dr Jitendra Singh reiterated, if only Nehru had allowed Sardar Patel to handle Jammu & Kashmir in the same manner as he was handling the other 560 odd princely States of the country, the history of the Indian sub-continent would have been different and PoJK would have been a part of India today. He said, simply because Nehru thought that he knew Jammu & Kashmir more closely than Patel, therefore Patel was kept out of the entire exercise and the price for this is being paid till today.
Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that once he had said in the Parliament that history will one day decide whether on the issue of Jammu & Kashmir, Nehru was right or Syama Prashad Mukherjee was right. Today, history has delivered its judgement and vindicated Mukherjee’s point of view and his vehement opposition to the stand taken by Nehru.
Reiterating that as per the 1994 unanimously passed resolution of the Indian Parliament, the only issue between two counties is how to retrieve back PoJK from the illegal occupation of Pakistan and make it a part of Indian union, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the irony is that resolution was at that time moved by the then Congress led government at the Centre, but for the next three decades, Congress Party itself conveniently forgot its commitment in the same manner as it is known to have conveniently forgotten so many other commitments made by it in the past.
For BJP, the unfinished agenda on Jammu & Kashmir is to retrieve back PoJK from Pakistan and this, said Dr Jitendra Singh, is not only our commitment to the Indian nation and the people of India, but also to our brothers and sisters living in PoJK who have been subjected to the most inhuman conditions and the rulers in Islamabad have left the entire region undeveloped and unattended, thus presenting a picture of pre-historic age.
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