New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs has claimed that the 27 Members of European Parliament, who paid a highly publicised and controversial private visit to Jammu and Kashmir from October 27, “got a sense of the threat of terrorism” during their stay.
In response to a query on the issue by Samajwadi Party MP Chaudhary Sukhram Singh Yadav in Rajya Sabha, minister of state for home G. Kishan Reddy said: “The government of Jammu and Kashmir has reported that a group of 27 Members of European Parliament (MEPs), who belonged to different political parties including ruling and opposition parties, paid a private visit to India from 28th October, 2019 to 1st November, 2019 at the invitation of International Institute for Nonaligned Studies, a Delhi based think tank.”
The minister did not directly answer whether the government had “given permission to the delegation of European MPs to meet citizens of Jammu and Kashmir to assess the current situation there”.
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The minister also did not answer directly the question posed by Yadav on “the justification for stopping the delegation of Indian MPs, which earlier went there to meet the citizens”.
To this, he only said: “The Indian delegation of MPs were not allowed to visit Kashmir Valley due to security concerns.”
On the reasons for facilitating the visit of MEPs, the MHA said: “Meetings were facilitated for the MEPs, as has been done previously on familiarisation visits for the visiting Members of Parliament of different countries. Further, the MEPs had expressed their desire that they would like to visit Kashmir to understand how terrorism is affecting India and how this has been a challenge for India.”
As for the takeaways from this ‘familiarisation visit’, Reddy said: “They got a sense of the threat of terrorism and how terrorism poses a threat to India especially in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Such exchanges promote deeper people to people contact and ultimately it feeds into the larger relationship which any two countries would like to develop.”
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Answering another question by Javed Ali Khan, also a Samajwadi Party MP, on who bore the expenses of the visit and if the institution which organised the tour was working as a coordinating institution of the government of India, the minister furnished the same standard reply that the visit was at the invitation of the Delhi-based think tank.
To another question on whether the Centre has “distracted from its policy of not allowing any external intervention in Jammu-Kashmir issue,” the minister responded saying: “India’s consistent position has been that issues, if any, with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally. There is no scope for any third party role or mediation.”
Another question on the issue was posed by Jose K. Mani of Kerala Congress (M) who asked if the Centre felt “emboldened by the situation in the Kashmir valley coming under relative control” and if this enabled it muster confidence to take the “risk of allowing a delegation of EU parliamentarians to assess the ground realities” when it has been stringent in not allowing free access to Jammu and Kashmir.
But the minister again stuck to the line and repeated the introductory part about the think tank inviting the MEPs and how “such exchanges promote deeper people to people contact”.