External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
Credit: Reuters File Photo
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took a jibe at Pakistan on Tuesday, saying people are talking less about the neighbouring country because it is the verdict of the market. “Nobody talks of losing stock,” he said at NDTV’s conclave ‘Decoding G-20’. He was responding to NDTV’s editor-in-chief Sanjay Pugalia’s supposedly humorous remark that the success of the Union government’s foreign policy is reflected in the fact that media conversations are complete without mentioning Pakistan now.
The minister then moved to talking about Kashmir, and termed the Union government’s decision of scrapping Article 370 as one of the "key achievements" of the government in the last 5 years.
“From foreign policy perspective, I saw how the rest of the world used this issue, to pressure us, to damage us, to tighten us whenever they wanted. If people ask me to list key achievements in the last 5 years, I will definitely put our decision to repeal article 370 in it, because it has long term benefits. And today, when I roam around the world I see everybody sort of accepts this. It is only us who have this fear of what the world will say, but once you do something with grit, the world understands.”
Jaishankar also reiterated the government's stand that the region had stayed backward, while the rest of the country progressed before the abrogation of Article 370. “I was in the cabinet in 2019. I was involved in the decisions that were taken. One part of me still wonders how wrongly we put up with the situation till 2019. How could we allow this to happen? Recently I asked a close friend of mine, who is from Kashmir, but had never gone to Lal chowk before 2019, to visit Lal chowk and see the difference now. What injustice (was taking place)..forget everything, we kept the state backward for reasons of politics.”
“I had gone there (Uri and Baramulla) when I had joined the civil services in 1979. And then in 2019, I visited the same places that I did in 1979 and I was amazed at how little had changed there in this period. While so much more had happened in India, I did not find anything in that part of the country,” the minister added while also answering questions on India's G-20 presidency, Modi diplomacy, Global South and more.
On August 5, 2019, the Union government had decided to strip the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir of special status, and bifurcate it into two Union territories. Several petitions challenging the abrogation of Article 370 and Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, were referred to the Constitution bench in 2019, and are currently being heard by the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud.
The Chief Justice had earlier said that the government cannot justify the “means” used to abrogate Article 370 and erase Jammu and Kashmir as a full-fledged State in August 2019 by simply pointing to the “ends” achieved. On August 29, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta apprised the Supreme Court that the UT status of Jammu and Kashmir was not a permanent thing. "So far as Ladakh is concerned, its UT status is going to remain for some time," Mehta had added.