No Indian minister should go for Kartarpur corridor ceremony in Pak: Swamy

Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament (MP) Subramanian Swamy on Sunday backed Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's decision to decline the invitation to attend the stone-laying ceremony of Kartarpur corridor on Pakistan side. "No Indian minister should go to the other side of the border until Pakistan stops cross-border terrorism," he said.

"I don't think any Indian minister should go to attend any kind of event in Pakistan. They are also preventing our diplomats from accompanying the people to religious places. Until Pakistan stops sponsoring cross-border terrorism, we should not allow anyone to go there for any kind of event," Swamy told ANI.

On Sunday, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh declined an invitation for the stone-laying ceremony on November 28, citing terror attacks in his state and the relentless killing of Indian troops on the Line of Control (LoC).

"Everyday Indian soldiers are either killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating," Singh wrote in his letter to Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

However, Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said that he would be attending the stone-laying ceremony of Kartarpur on Pakistan side, while praising the initiative taken by Indian and Pakistan governments to develop Kartarpur corridor.

"It is a commendable step by both the governments of India and Pakistan. If you take a step, they will obviously take it further. Now that we have taken a step, they said that they would be inaugurating the historic corridor. It is a commendable initiative indeed," Sidhu said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor, on the Pakistan side, on November 28.