Currently on a six-day visit to the United Kingdom, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh on Monday held an exclusive interactive meet with London based Jammu & Kashmir origin students and social groups.

The meeting, which lasted for nearly an hour, consisted of persons engaged in different areas of work and hailing from different regions of the Union Territory including the Minister’s own personal Lok Sabha constituency of Udhampur. Also present in the meeting were representatives of the J&K Study Centre branch in London who have their main office in New Delhi.

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There were also members of the Dogra organisations of J&K and members of the Kashmiri Pandit activist groups. Dr Jitendra Singh appreciated the manner in which they had contributed in correcting the negative narrative about India particularly in the context of J&K by certain vested interests and had also stood up to challenge the anti-India forces in the United Kingdom.

The Minister said that after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over, he had sought to correct several anomalies of the past which were the legacy of the successive governments since 1947. He said the abrogation of Article 370 had created a sense of belonging among the people of Jammu & Kashmir and given them equal rights vis-à-vis their counterparts citizens in the rest of the country.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that Prime Minister Modi will go down in history for having brought justice to the Pakistan refugees settled in J&K and the daughters of J&K who were deprived of their constitutional rights of citizenship and owning the property.

During the course of the discussion, Dr Jitendra Singh said that if only the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had allowed the then Home Minister Sardar Patel to handle J&K the same manner he was handling other princely states of India, today the part of J&K which is illegally occupied by Pakistan would have been part of India and the issue of Pakistan occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) would have never risen.

However, he said it is very much on the agenda of the government led by Prime Minister Modi and the BJP as a political party to retrieve the illegally occupied PoJK from the control of Pakistan and restore it back to India.

Different groups interacting with the Union Minister gave him an update about the recent activities conducted by them to unite all the India groups against Anti India forces. They gave a brief about their interactions with different Members of Parliament in the British Parliament in addition to seminars and intellectual meets that they had been holding from time to time. The Minister advised them that time has come to create our own narrative so that the false narratives created by our adversaries do not gain upper hand.

The Minister in turn appreciated the manner in which most of those from J&K who have settled in the United Kingdom made a respectable status for themselves either as professionals or in industry and said that they were not only contributing to the growth of the country where they are settled but also always keen to offer their services to their motherland.