‘Pointless Remarks’: India Slams Pakistan for Raising Kashmir Issue During UN Vote on Russia

India has regularly called upon Pakistan to refrain from “internationalizing” the Kashmir dispute and maintained that the territorial issue is a “bilateral matter”. Islamabad, for its part, has continued to raise the matter at the UN and during its bilateral discussions with other governments in a bid to garner international support.

India has hit out at Pakistan for raising the Kashmir dispute during an emergency special session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly which was convened on Wednesday in New York to vote on Moscow’s referenda in the Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhye regions.

While both India and Pakistan were among 35 countries that abstained from voting on the resolution, Islamabad’s Permanent Representative to the UN Munir Akram used the opportunity to solicit support for his government on the Kashmir dispute.

In his remarks to the UN General Assembly, Akram said that “we look forward to seeing similar concern and condemnation regarding India’s annexation of illegally-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”

Responding to Akram’s remarks during her ‘right to reply’, India’s Permanent Representative to UN Ruchira Kamboj slammed the Pakistani envoy for making “frivolous and pointless remarks against my country.”

Kamboj said that Pakistan’s statement deserved “collective contempt and sympathy for a mindset which repeatedly utters falsehood,“ calling on Islamabad to end “cross-border terrorism” against Indian citizens in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country.

"It is important, however, to set the record straight. The entire territory of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India, irrespective of what the representative of Pakistan believes or covets," the Indian envoy stated.

Pakistan has long called upon India to vacate the part of Jammu and Kashmir region that it has administered since 1948 and backed holding a referendum in the region.

India has been consistent in maintaining that the whole Jammu and Kashmir region is an “integral part” of the country and rejected outside interference in the territorial dispute.

India has also regularly urged Pakistan to vacate the part of Jammu and Kashmir administered by Islamabad, calling it an “illegal occupation.”

In 2019, the Indian Parliament voted to revoke the semi-autonomous status of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state and bifurcated the region into two federal territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

In response, Pakistan downgraded its commercial and diplomatic ties with India and has since maintained that it would only resume the stalled dialogue once the Indian government reverses its decisions.

New Delhi has rejected the demand, calling everything related to Jammu and Kashmir an “internal matter” for India.