India slammed Pakistan at the United Nations on Tuesday for repeatedly raising the Kashmir issue on all platforms, including the ones where it is not the part of the agenda. India said that the neighbouring country has ploughed a "lonely furrow contrary to the onward march of history," according to reports.
India's statement came after Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, said that the UN's agenda of decolonisation will "remain incomplete" if the "long festering dispute" of Jammu and Kashmir is not resolved.
Reports state that Pakistan had raised the issue during a debate on decolonisation in the fourth committee of the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
Minister at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN, Srinivas Prasad, said that India "rejects the efforts of the delegation of Pakistan to bring issues which have never been on the agenda of this Committee ever in its history."
Prasad said that repeated attempts to bring in such issues by Pakistan are considered as a diversion from the agenda by India and as a distraction not worthy of a response.
"Even as all those who have taken the floor have focused on issues of Non Self-Governing Territories, a solitary member State, as usual, has ventured to plough a lonely furrow contrary to the onward march of history," the Indian diplomat said, according to PTI reports.
Pakistan, however, in its right to reply reiterated that Kashmir remained a "dispute under any definition", and that there was an "explicit obligation" for the UN and the parties to work to resolve it.
"Contrary to Indian claims, Jammu and Kashmir never was and never can be an integral part of India. It is disputed territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council," the Pakistani diplomat said.
India late last month had given a strong reply to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's speech at the UNGA session in New York, calling the nation "Terroristan -- with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism."
India's Enam Gambhir, in its Right of Reply at the UN, hit out at Abbasi for bringing up the Kashmir issue, and said that Jammu and Kashmir is and will remain an integral part of India.
