Moin ul Haque has chosen to repeat Pakistan's lies and half truths on Jammu and Kashmir, the Embassy of India in China said.Haque's misinterpretations, while not surprising cannot conceal the significant progress that J&K has made in the year following the abrogation of Article 370, it further noted.
The Embassy noted that the Global Times refused to carry the Indian Embassy's response to the interview. In the last one year since the decision on Article 370, several positive and affirmative union laws have been extended to J&K. People have been afforded the opportunity to elect their representatives at the grass-root level through the elections to the block development councils.
Evidence of the change sweeping through J&K can be seen in the creation of new education and health infrastructure. Fifty new educational institutions have been established in the region over the last one year, the largest edition in 70 years. Over half a million Kashmiri students have availed governments scholarship schemes through the course of the last one year, a year on year increase of nearly 400 per cent.
The new health infrastructure, including medical and nursing colleges, as well as the state of the art hospitals, will soon make affordable and high quality healthcare services a reality in the region.
The government of J&K has advertised 10,000 job openings for youth at all levels, with another 25,000 in the pipeline. Concerted efforts to attract foreign investment to the region have seen over 150 MoUs concluded.
India's concerted efforts to bring peace, stability and progress to J&K stand in stark contrast to Pakistan's strategy, which is a little more than a blatant and rapacious campaign of cross border terrorism aimed at debilitating the region.
Its unprovoked ceasefire violations, numbering close to 3,000 in the first seven months of 2020 alone, provide support for terrorist infiltration along the Line of Control. Terrorists recruited, trained and armed by Pakistan have disturbed peace and order in J&K, with over 450 incidents of terrorists orchestrated violence taking place since August 2019, leading to several civilian casualties.
As it is in fact Pakistan that has repeatedly effected administrative and demographic changes in terrorises that it has occupied illegally and forcibly in J&K and Ladakh. The Pakistan obsession with irredentist pursuits has also been laid bare in its latest exercise in political absurdity on August 4, when it made untenable claims to Indian territories in the state of Gujarat and Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh.
Perhaps Ambassador Haque could consider holding up a mirror to his own regime and reflect on Pakistan's own actions in the region before making ludicrous characterisations of the Indian Government's actions, the embassy also said.
