Commonwealth meet: India slams Pak's 'bigoted agenda' on J&K

In yet another run-in with Pakistan on an international platform over the Kashmir issue and alleged violation of minority rights, India said Wednesday that the only dispute left in what Islamabad called a "disputed territory” was its own illegal occupation of "certain parts, which sooner or later, it would have to vacate".

At the Commonwealth foreign affairs ministers meeting, India also reminded the international community that Pakistan was the same country that had the dubious distinction of becoming synonymous with the phrase "epicenter of terrorism” and of hosting the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the United Nations.

India's reaction was in response to comments by Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in the meeting alleging that India was targeting its religious minorities.

"It was unfortunate that today’s Commonwealth Meeting was misused by one of our south Asian member state to pursue its own bigoted, ill-conceived, narrow and unilateral agenda on a multilateral platform," said MEA's secretary (west) Vikas Swarup, responding to Pakistan's allegations in the virtual meeting. Swarup represented India in the meeting.

"When we heard them rant about a South Asian state, we were left wondering why it was describing itself? And not surprisingly it came from a globally acknowledged promoter of state sponsored terrorism masquerading as an alleged victim of the same. We heard it from a country that brought genocide to South Asia 49 years back when it killed its own people," he added.

The official also said that for a country like Pakistan to hypocritically preach about religious minority groups elsewhere, while itself trampling upon the rights of its own indigenous minorities, was "indeed most regrettable, and a blatant misuse of this august platform".

The Pakistan minister had earlier said that while the world remained preoccupied with pandemic, a state in south Asia was targeting its religious minorities groups in order to foment division and hatred amongst community groups. "It has transgressed rights and freedoms of millions and fanned hyper nationalism to engineer illegal demographic change in a disputed territory and sowed racial tensions. We ignore its transgressions only at our own peril," he said.