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Islamabad, May 05 (KMS): The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has lodged strong protest with the Indian High Commission over notification of the so-called report of the Delimitation Commission and rejected it as illegal and manifestly aimed at further disenfranchising and disempowering the majority Muslim population of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
A statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the report is nothing but a futile attempt by India to lend ‘legitimacy’ to its illegal and unilateral actions of August 5, 2019.
“The Government of Pakistan also reiterates its condemnation of the so-called ‘Delimitation Commission’ itself which was designed for effectuating demographic engineering of the Muslim majority electoral districts and converting them into Hindu-majority areas. The preposterous exercise that blatantly favoured the Hindu-dominated constituencies in the IIOJK has already been rejected by the political parties in the IIOJK.”
“The Government of Pakistan further wishes to convey that the Indian government’s sinister ploy of reducing the representation of Muslims in the re-designated constituencies under the garb of the so-called delimitation stands exposed. Contrary to the rationale pushed by Indian Government that the delimitation effort was aimed to empower’ the local population, it is now clear that the new electoral boundaries will further disempower, marginalize and divide the people of the occupied territory. If anything, the mischievous exercise will pave the way for installing yet another puppet regime backed by the BJP-RSS combine in the IIOJK.”
“The Government of India is once again reminded that the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is an
internationally recognized dispute and a long-standing item on the agenda of the UN Security Council. Unilateral, illegal and deliberately manipulative attempts by India, allowing the Hindu population to obtain disproportionately higher electoral representation to the detriment of the Muslim population, is not only against all norms of democracy and morality but also India’s obligations under the UN Security Council resolutions and international law.”
“The Government of Pakistan cautions the Indian Government to refrain from bringing about any illegal demographic changes in the occupied territory, stop forthwith its oppression in the IIOJK, and let the Kashmiri people determine their own future through a free and fair plebiscite as enshrined in the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions,” the statement added.
