Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar on Thursday said that any discussion on the Kartarpur corridor will be taken up with Pakistan in a meeting on July 14. Kumar added that India was committed to complete the project and expected two structural aspects of the corridor to be completed on time.
“We are fully committed to this project,” Kumar said. “We want this project to be expeditiously completed. We are aware that it involves the sentiments of people, sentiments of the pilgrims who are going to visit the Kartarpur Sahib.”
The spokesperson also said that work on the “state-of-the-art passenger terminal” and the four-lane highway, which is supposed to connect Kartarpur corridor to the national highway were under way. He added that the work was likely to completed by September-October.
“We will have talks and we will take up matters with Pakistan when we meet them on the 14th of this month,” Kumar said. Pakistan Foreign Office also confirmed the meeting at the Wagah border, saying that the draft agreement for finalising the modalities of the corridor among other technical matters will be discussed.
“The Indian delegation will come to Pakistan for the talks to be held at Wagah,” PTI quoted Foreign Office Spokesperson Muhammad Faisal as saying.
The first meeting between Indian and Pakistani officials was held on March 14 in Attari. At the meeting, India had urged Pakistan to provide visa-free access to 5,000 pilgrims a day initially, on all days of the week, to the Kartarpur shrine.
New Delhi and Islamabad laid the foundation stone for the project in November. The corridor will connect Dera Baba Nanak in India’s Punjab with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur area of Pakistan’s Narowal district. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, died in Kartarpur in 1539. The corridor will allow Indian Sikh devotees to travel without visas to the pilgrimage site.
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