New Delhi: India on Saturday (January 13) summoned the UK’s high commissioner to India, Alexander Ellis, to protest a visit earlier this week by the UK’s Pakistan envoy to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as “unacceptable”.
The Indian protest was lodged three days after the UK’s high commissioner to Pakistan, Jane Marriott, had visited Mirpur on January 10.
“India has taken a serious note of the highly objectionable visit of the British High Commissioner in Islamabad, along with a UK Foreign Office official, to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on 10 January 2024. Such infringement of India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is unacceptable,” said a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
“The Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are, have been and shall always remain an integral part of India,” added the MEA.
The Indian foreign secretary, Vinay Kwatra, lodged the protest with Ellis.
Last year, US ambassador Donald Blome had visited the Gilgit and Hunza valleys ostensibly with the agenda of addressing climate resilience.
India had lodged a protest over his visit with the US, but New Delhi had not announced whether the US ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, was summoned.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had then said, “We have objections regarding the visit and the meetings in PoK by the US envoy and we have conveyed the same.”
Marriott had framed her visit to Mirpur as a diaspora outreach exercise.
“Salaam from Mirpur, the heart of the UK and Pakistan’s people-to-people ties! Seventy per cent of British-Pakistani roots are from Mirpur, making our work together crucial for diaspora interests. Thank you for your hospitality!” said Marriott, also the first woman British high commissioner to Pakistan, on her January 10 visit.
According to a press release by the UK high commission in Islamabad about the Mirpur visit, the British diplomat was “delighted to gain insight into how cross-cultural influences had shaped Mirpur into the city it is today”.
Accompanied by the head of the Pakistan department at the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Richard Lindsay, she also met with the political leadership of PoK, which Pakistan terms as Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Marriott’s outreach exercise also created a storm among Hindutva activists on social media.