Chandigarh, Dec 19 (IANS): Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday reiterated that Pakistan’s decision to open the Kartarpur Corridor was an “ISI game-plan to help forces inimical to India, including the Sikhs For Justice (SFJ)”.
Amarinder was reacting to the statement by the SFJ seeking Pakistan’s help to ‘liberate’ Punjab from India. The CM said it has exposed the nefarious designs of the organisation and its nexus with the Pakistani Army and the ISI. He also took exception to SFJ’s plans to hold Kartarpur Sahib Convention, 2019, coinciding with auspicious occasion of 550th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev.
In a statement, Amarinder said, “It has also once again proved that the Pak government had always been, and continues to remain, a puppet regime, working at the behest of the Army there, he added.
“The whole affair is a bigger conspiracy by the Pak Army, which is persistently trying to revive militancy in Punjab,” said the chief minister, reiterating his stand on the issue. The CM also reiterated that Punjab, and the Army, are “well prepared to counter any such plans of the neighbouring country”.
In a reaction to the statement of SFJ’s legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, Amarinder Singh said the cat is now well and truly out of the bag, and the truth of the deep-rooted connection between SJF and Pakistani Army is out in the open.
The statement has nailed SJF’s lies that it is a peaceful movement to build momentum for a referendum on a separate state of Khalistan, said the chief minister, adding that it is more than evident now that the organisation, with the full support and backing of Pak Army and ISI, is striving to foment trouble in Indian Punjab.
“Through his statement, Pannu has made clear his intentions of going all out to force the secession of Punjab from India, with the backing of Pak Army and ISI,” said the Punjab Chief Minister.
“Punjab is today much better equipped than it was in the 80s and 90s when Pak-backed terrorism had swept the state,” he said, warning Islamabad against extending any further support to SFJ or other such outfits that are bent on disturbing the state’s hard-earned peace.
“The Pak Army would do well to remember the ignominious defeats it had suffered at the hands of the Indian Army on every occasion it had tried to take on the might of the latter, right from the 1965 and 1971 wars to the more recent Kargil battle,” warned Amarinder in his statement.
Asserting that he was in favour of the Kartarpur Corridor to fulfil the long-pending aspirations of the Sikh community in India, the Chief Minister said it was the misuse of the initiative that he was opposed to. If Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was truly in favour of opening the doors for long-lasting peace with India through this corridor he should not only unequivocally condemn the SFJ statement but should also ensure that Pak soil is not used by the anti-India outfit to further its campaign.