-Indian Premier sends greeting letter to Pakistani leadership on Pakistan Day
-Modi says India desires cordial relations with Pakistani people
-Pakistani, Indian officials holding Water parleys to solve disputes
By Mahnoor Makhdoom
ISLAMABAD: In a major and rather dramatic development, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has extended good wishes to the Pakistani Premier Imran Khan in a letter received in PM Office on Tuesday in connection with Pakistan Day celebrations, while at the same time Pakistani and Indian official are holding bilateral Water Talks in New Delhi to resolve water disputes, giving the global observers and analysts to believe that the decades old ice, stalling bilateral ties and dialogue process between the nuclear arch rivals has started to melt finally.
The message, dated March 22, was conveyed to Prime Minister Imran by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad through the Foreign Office.
In his letter, Modi extended greetings to the people of Pakistan on occasion of Pakistan Day, which is being celebrated across the country yesterday. “As a neighbouring country, India desires cordial relations with the people of Pakistan,” Modi wrote. “For this, an environment of trust, devoid of terror and hostility, is imperative.”
The Indian premier also conveyed wishes to Imran and the Pakistani people for dealing with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, terming it a “difficult time for humanity”.
“Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration,” the message concluded.
At the same time, in New Delhi, a host of issues under the Indus Waters Treaty, including Pakistan’s objections to the design of Indian hydropower projects on Chenab river, are under discussion between the Indus Commissioners of the two countries as part of their annual meeting underway here Tuesday. The Indian delegation is being led by PK Saxena who will be joined by his advisors from the Central Water Commission, the Central Electricity Authority and the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation. The Pakistan delegation is led by its Indus Commissioner Syed Muhammad Meher Ali Shah. The delegation arrived here on Monday evening.During the two-day talks that began on Tuesday, Pakistan is on agenda to raise objections on the design of the Indian hydropower projects on Chenab river whose water is largely assigned to Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty.
This year’s meeting is the first between the two Commissioners after the August 2019 nullification of the operative provisions of Article 370 that gave special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The erstwhile state was also carved into two union territories Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. India has since cleared several hydropower projects for the regio.
It is worth mentioning here that for the past few weeks, different International players, including a middle eastern State have been claiming of cooling down the heat between Pakistan and India through overt and covert channels.last month, Indian DG Military Operations (MO) established a telephonic connection with his opposite number in Pakistan army and engaged Pakistani DG MO for a de-escalation process on the LoC and Working Boundary and to strictly follow the ceasefire agreement, signed between both sides back in 2003 and violated by India for over 13000 time till February 2021.
In another move, a couple of days back, Pakistan’s Army Chief General Bajwa, while addressing a security moot in Islamabad, asked India to bury the hatchets and move forward for peace and development. However this statement of Pakistani COAS came as an amazing opportunity to Indian Media Circus to sensationalize it and to mock Pakistan army as usual while Prime Minister Imran Khan is on record to have asked Indian leadership to move forward for peace and to make joint efforts for elevating the living standards of the poverty-stricken masses on both sides of the border.
It is also to be mentioned here that despite being hostile on the LoC, India also went on rampage at LAC in Laddakh and engaged Chinese PLA wich resulted into a great reaction from Chinese army and India finally had to make a truce and after a couple of days of making a peace deal with China on LAC, Indian engaged Pakistan for a similar peace bid in LOC by engaging at DGMOs level.
It remains crystal clear that India’s Modi government is facing a chaos in shape of the ever strengthening and deeper growing protests by Indian farmers against new Agri laws, introduced by Modi government and being termed as draconian laws by the protesters. Defense and diplomatic analysts are of the firm o[pinion that the failure of internal policies constantly weakening economy due to poor policies to counter situation, emerging out of Corona Pandemic and facing it extremely hard to tackle the farmers’ protest chaos.
