PTI, CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Sunday declined Pakistan’s invite to attend the ground-breaking ceremony for the Kartarpur Corridor on the other side of the border, even as his cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu accepted the request with “with unalloyed joy”.
In a letter to Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Singh said it is a historic occasion, but regretted his inability to be present, citing terror attacks in his state and killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistan troops as the reason.
“Firstly, not a day passes when Indian soldiers are not killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating,” he said.
Secondly, the chief minister claimed, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has started its nefarious activities in Punjab.
“Since March 2017, the state has neutralised 19 ISI-armed and controlled modules, apprehended 81 terrorists and seized 79 weapons, numerous grenades of the HG-84 type made in Pakistan’s Ordnance factories with Austrian know how, and some IEDs,” the chief minister claimed.
However, state cabinet minister Sidhu, who had been advocating a corridor connecting Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan’s Kartarpur with Dera Baba Nanak Sahib in Punjab’s Gurdaspur, on Sunday wrote to Qureshi, accepting his invitation for the ground-breaking ceremony, where Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will also be present.
“It is with great honour and unalloyed joy that I accept your invitation to attend the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur Sahib on November 28. I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion,” Sidhu wrote to Qureshi.
