Chandigarh, Dec 9 Citing the fact that Pakistan Army General Qamar Javed Bajwa had broken the news of opening the Kartarpur Corridor to Navjot Singh Sidhu even before Imran Khan was sworn-in as their Prime Minister, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has dubbed the whole affair as a bigger conspiracy hatched by the Pakistan army.
The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor is clearly a game plan of the ISI, said the Chief Minister in an interview on electronic media , adding that a bigger conspiracy seems to have been hatched by Pakistan Army against India.
He admitted that Pakistan was attempting to revive militancy in Punjab and thus everyone should be wary of all of its overtures, no matter how grand they appear to be.
The Sidhu affair was being unnecessarily hyped and those raising it had clearly failed to see the ISI game plan, said Capt Amarinder, lashing out at the Akalis for branding the Punjab minister as stooge of the Pakistan Prime Minister.
He dismissed it as nothing more than a credit war, lambasting the Akalis and the BJP Central leadership for indulging in unwarranted controversy over his (Chief Minister’s) relations with Sidhu in a bid to divert public attention from the core issue of Pakistan’s continued and deliberate perpetration of terror activities in Punjab with the ultimate aim of destabilising the border state.
Capt Amarinder said the demand for opening of the Kartarpur Sahib corridor was pending since partition as several holy Sikh shrines (Sri Nankana Sahib, Sri Panja Sahib, Dera Sahib and Kartarpur Sahib) had been left in Pakistan. Even former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh had taken up the issue of opening the Kartarpur corridor with Pakistan.
The Chief Minister said he himself had raised this issue with his Pakistan Punjab counterpart Parvez Elahi and with the then President Parvez Musharraf during his previous tenure as the chief minister.
He said Imran Khan was undoubtedly making efforts to bring peace, tranquillity and harmony with India, but at the same time he should also prevail upon the top brass of Pakistani Army to ensure that killings of Indian soldiers at borders are stopped immediately.
Pakistan’s history reveals that if any Prime Minister wants to stay in power, he has to toe the line of the Army, said the Chief Minister, citing the example of Nawaz Sharif’s agreement with the Pakistani Army in Dubai, which led to his continuation as Prime Minister.UNI
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