United Nations, Dec 16: In a sharp retort, India ripped through Pakistan’s “divisive agenda” at the UN Security Council, calling out Islamabad’s “unique” way of respecting the will of its people by jailing a prime minister and giving lifetime immunity to its army chief.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, delivered a strong response in the Security Council on Monday after Pakistan’s Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad raised the issues of Jammu and Kashmir and the Indus Waters Treaty during an open debate on ‘Leadership for Peace’.
“Pakistan’s unwarranted reference to Jammu and Kashmir in today’s open debate attests to its obsessive focus on harming India and its people. A serving non-permanent Security Council Member that chooses to further this obsession in all meetings and platforms of the UN in pursuit of its divisive agenda cannot be expected to fulfil its designated responsibilities and obligations.
“Let me be clear — India will counter Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in all its forms and manifestations with all its might,” Harish said.
India also rejected the Pakistani envoy’s assertion that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir should be settled in accordance with the UN Charter, relevant Security Council resolutions and the will of the Kashmiri people.
“Pakistan, of course, has a unique way of respecting the will of its people — by jailing a prime minister, by banning the ruling political party, and by letting its armed forces engineer a constitutional coup through the 27th amendment and giving life-time immunity to its Chief of Defence Forces,” Harish said.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been imprisoned since his arrest in August 2023 on corruption charges and has reportedly been held for extended periods in solitary confinement.
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Alice Jill Edwards has urged the Pakistani government to take immediate action to address reports of Khan’s “inhumane and undignified” detention conditions, warning that they may amount to torture or other ill-treatment.
The 27th Constitutional Amendment, passed last month under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, gives Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir lifelong immunity from any legal prosecution.
Harish further reiterated that the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are an integral and inalienable part of India. “They were, are, and will always remain so,” he said.
Harish added that India had entered into the Indus Waters Treaty 65 years ago in good faith, in a spirit of goodwill and friendship.
“Throughout these six and a half decades, Pakistan has violated the spirit of the Treaty by inflicting three wars and thousands of terror attacks on India,” he said.
“In the last four decades, tens of thousands of Indian lives have been lost in Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks, the most recent of which was the Pahalgam terror attack,” in April 2025, which involved religion-based targeted killings of 26 innocent civilians.
“It is in this backdrop that India has finally announced that the Treaty will be held in abeyance until Pakistan, which is a global epicentre of terror, credibly and irrevocably ends its support for cross-border and all other forms of terrorism,” Harish said. (PTI)
