India on Thursday lashed out Pakistan for attempting to “misuse” the UNSC platform to discuss Kashmir, which New Delhi regards as a bilateral matter.

Speaking on China holding an informal closed-door consultation on Kashmir in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday night, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said: “Attempt was made by Pakistan, through a UNSC member, to misuse the platform. An overwhelming majority of UNSC was of the view that UNSC was not the right forum for such issues and it should be discussed bilaterally.”

Kumar further stated that the closed-door meeting concluded without any outcome while adding that Pakistan’s “desperate measures to peddle baseless allegation and present an alarming scenario lacked any credibility”.

The MEA spokesperson further hoped that the message has gone loud and clear to Pakistan that issues between New Delhi and Islamabad are to be discussed only in a bilateral setup.

He further advised Pakistan to avoid such “global embarrassment” by refraining from such acts in future.

Pakistan faced an embarrassing setback once again on Wednesday as its efforts to raise the Jammu and Kashmir issue at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) through China, flopped, with none of the world body members commenting on the matter apart from Beijing.

The Kashmir issue was met with a pushback led by the other permanent members who said it was a bilateral issue and not a matter for them and thereby isolating Beijing in the 15-member body.

The UNSC had held a “closed-door” meeting on Wednesday night on Kashmir at the request of Pakistan’s all-weather ally China.

China had made a request to deliberate on the Kashmir issue under the agenda of “Any Other Business Points”.

The US, France, UK and Russia took a strong stand against the Council’s interference in the issue.

Meanwhile, India slammed Pakistan for trying to internationalise the Kashmir issue. New Delhi asserted that Islamabad needs to focus on the hard tasks it has to address in order to ensure normal relations with India.

Wednesday’s move by China was the third such attempt to raise the Kashmir issue in the UNSC since August last when the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution was scrapped by the government, and the state was bifurcated into two union territories.

China has been critical of India’s reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir.

On August 5, last year, India ended special status to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and decided to bifurcate the state two Union Territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Further on, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said that as per the established practice and procedure within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), all of its eight members, as well as four observer states and other international dialogue partners will be invited to attend the meeting, which will be hosted by India later this year.

According to reports, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will also be invited to the annual meeting of the council of heads of government of SCO.

However, a final decision on whether Khan attends the meeting will be made by Islamabad.

The economic and security bloc which initially comprised of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, included India and Pakistan in 2017. India took over the presidency of the ‘heads of government’ meeting last year and it was announced in the 18th meeting of the SCO’s Council of heads of government held in Tashkent in 2019.