ISLAMABAD, JUN 5: Pakistan on Friday categorically rejected India’s baseless remarks regarding the upcoming elections in Gilgit-Baltistan, saying New Delhi remained a “global leader in propagating fake narratives and tendentious propaganda”.

In a statement, the Foreign Office said that India’s “outlandish claims” were part of a familiar and carefully choreographed attempt to conflate fact with fiction.

“We unequivocally reject this latest Indian rhetoric with the contempt it deserves,” the FO added.

GB is set to go to the polls on June 7 to elect its fourth Legislative Assembly. The 2009 Gilgit-Baltistan (Empowerment and Self-Governance) Order, issued by President Asif Ali Zardari, was intended to grant the region autonomy to govern itself.

The FO’s strongly worded rebuttal comes after India’s foreign ministry said it had lodged a protest with Pakistan over the upcoming elections in GB.

In the rebuttal, the FO reiterated that India remained in illegal occupation of the internationally recognised disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

“The Jammu and Kashmir dispute, which remains the longest unresolved item on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, originated from India’s forcible and unlawful occupation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947,” according to the FO.

It maintained that the only just and durable settlement of the Kashmir dispute lay in the faithful implementation of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, ensuring the Kashmiri people their inalienable right to self-determination through a “free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices”.

India’s unfounded assertions regarding GB cannot divert attention from the grave and systematic human rights violations being perpetrated by Indian occupation forces in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), the FO said.

It added that the continued impunity enjoyed by Indian forces under draconian laws imposed in IIOJK was “another dimension of the state terrorism” being perpetrated by New Delhi against Kashmiris.

Islamabad called on India to vacate all occupied territories, reverse all illegal and unilateral actions taken in IIOJK, particularly since August 5, 2019.

India should repeal all draconian laws, and allow access to neutral observers, international human rights and humanitarian organisations, and the international media to ascertain the situation on the ground, the FO said.

India must also enable the Kashmiri people to exercise their right to self-determination in accordance with the relevant UNSC resolutions, it added.