LAHORE, December 11: The AJK President Sardar Masood Khan has said that after articles 370 and 35-A, India had scrapped article 367 also, which was very important in determining constitutional powers between the Indian regime and the occupied Jammu and Kashmir government. “The Modi regime after abolishing Kashmir-related articles from the constitution of India, has also deprived the Kashmiri of those rights which they had enjoyed even before 1947,” he added.

He expressed these views while speaking at a seminar on “repeal of articles 370 and 35-A and Kashmir issue” organized by National Institute of Maritime Affairs [NIMA] at Pakistan Navy War College here on Wednesday. Director General NIMA Vice Admiral Abdul Halim also spoke on the occasion, while prominent scholar Huma Baqai, Justice (retd) Nasir Javed Iqbal and Vice Admiral (retd) Khan Hussam Bin Siddique read papers on different aspects of Kashmir conflict.

The AJK president rejected India’s negative propaganda that Pakistan had failed to pull out its troops from Kashmir, and had thus missed the opportunity of plebiscite.

Referring to the UN Security Council resolutions No 91 and 122, he said that no move of the occupied Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly could be the substitute of plebiscite proposed by the UN Security Council. He added that even before the independence of Pakistan and India, the Kashmiri people had adopted accession to Pakistan resolution on July 19, 1947, and had thus declared their future destiny.

While describing the freedom war of August, September and October 1947 and the inception of Azad Kashmir as the struggle for the completion of Pakistan, the state president said that a dominating majority of the Kashmiri people still consider themselves to be Pakistani citizens and they are offering unprecedented sacrifices for the completion of Pakistan.

Sardar Masood Khan said that to punish Pakistan for supporting the Kashmiri people, India had started a proxy war through shelling on the citizens of Azad Kashmir living along the Line of Control, and through terrorism in different parts of Pakistan. “All these Indian actions are pushing Pakistan towards a war, and the war, if broke out, would not be conventional but a nuclear clash,” he said and warned that this will affect not only South Asia but the entire world.

He regretted that the Indian rulers had launched war against their own Muslim citizens also. “The Hindu rioters kill the Indian Muslims in broad daylight, and circulate the news to create harassment among the Muslims and other Indian minorities,” he said adding that this is an ideological war started by BJP and other Hindu fanatic groups to eliminate the Muslims and establish Hindu rule in the whole South Asia.

The AJK president said that the world media was highlighting the stand of Kashmiri people in its true perspective, while voices in favor of Kashmiri people are rising in the parliaments of several countries, and the Indian atrocities and human rights violations in occupied are being condemned. “We should take advantage of this favorable environment on the international level, and expose the false Indian narrative,” he added.