The Pakistan government on Saturday said it rejects “negative propaganda” in the Indian media against the Kartarpur corridor project. Prime Minister Imran Khan had laid the foundation stone of the project between the International Border and Kartarpur area of Pakistan’s Narowal district on November 28, two days after India inaugurated the project on its side of the border.
“We are deeply dismayed at the relentless negative propaganda campaign being waged by a section of the Indian media against Pakistan on the Kartarpur Corridor Initiative,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The ministry said the decision to build a corridor was taken only as a mark of deference to the wishes of the country’s minority Sikh community, and that “attributing other motives” to it is “purely malicious”.
The ministry said that the laying of the foundation stone had evoked a positive response from Sikhs in India, Pakistan and the rest of the world. “We are convinced that those seeking to sow negativity around this initiative for partisan purposes or due to their known anti-Pakistan proclivities will not succeed in their designs,” the statement added. “Pakistan will continue to do what is right for advancing this noble initiative.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Pakistan will now begin to build the physical infrastructure for the corridor. The ministry said it wants to work out the modalities of passage through the corridor with the Indian government.
“The inauguration of the corridor project on both sides has created another moment of hope for the peoples of India and Pakistan,” the statement added. “We hope every effort would be made to preserve and take forward the Kartarpur spirit.”
On Thursday, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had criticised some sections of the media for their purported portrayal of the project as a “conspiracy to create Khalistan”. “It is quite amusing how some TV channels are trying to distort a gesture like Kartarpur into some kind of conspiracy to create Khalistan,” Mufti had tweeted. “One fails to understand why allowing people pilgrimage to Guru Nanak Dev ji’s birth place would assume such undertones.”
The pro-Khalistan group Sikhs for Justice has announced its plans to hold a convention in Kartarpur to advocate its 2020 referendum campaign for an independent Sikh country, the Hindustan Times had reported on Thursday.
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