Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Sunday criticised Indian ministers Sushma Swaraj and Harsimrat Kaur Badal for allegedly distorting his comments on the Kartarpur corridor.
“Dragging my comment towards ‘Sikh sentiments’ is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent [and] mislead,” Qureshi tweeted on Sunday. “What I said was strictly with ref [reference] to bilat [bilateral] interaction with the Indian govt [government]. We have deep respect for Sikh sentiments [and] no amount of distortions or controversies would change it.”
Qureshi said the decision to open the Kartarpur corridor was taken in good faith and will be carried forward in good faith.
A day after the foundation laying ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor in Pakistan, Qureshi had said that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had bowled a “googly” to ensure India’s presence at the ground-breaking ceremony. “Imran delivered a googly and India sent two ministers to Pakistan,” he had said, according to The Indian Express.
Union Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj on Saturday said that Qureshi’s statement showed he had “no respect for Sikh sentiments”. “You only play googlies,” she tweeted. “Let me explain to you that we were not trapped by your ‘googlies’. Our two Sikh Ministers went to Kartarpur Sahib to offer prayers in the Holy Gurudwara.”
Swaraj chose to skip the foundation laying ceremony on the Pakistani side and deputed Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri to attend the event.
A day after Swaraj’s tweet, Badal tweeted to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, urging him to take action against Qureshi for hurting Sikh sentiments by equating the attendance of ministers at the function “with trapping India by bowling a googly”.
“As a devout Sikh I feel anyone having deep respect for Sikhism wud [would] not politicise [the] holy initiative of Kartarpur Corridor by calling it ‘googly’ or as a good ‘chaal’ as termed by u ur prez [you and your president],” she said. “Sikhs are not pawns in chess.”
The Kartarpur corridor will connect Dera Baba Nanak in India’s Punjab with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur area of Pakistan’s Narowal district, where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, died in 1539.
India and Pakistan laid the foundation stone for the project last week. However, the events were overshadowed by discord between the two countries over the alleged role of Pakistan-based groups in a grenade attack in Amritsar last week. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had criticised Islamabad at the event and declined Pakistan’s invitation to attend the ceremony. Swaraj also pulled India out of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Islamabad, citing cross-border terrorism as one of the reasons.
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