Continuing with his tough talk, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said that Pakistan has no locus standi on Kashmir and that “no country is backing it on the current issue”.

Singh’s comments come in the wake of Islamabad trying to internationalise the Centre’s move to abrogate provisions of Article 370.

Addressing a Defence Research and Development Organisation event in Leh, Rajnath Singh questioned why Pakistan keeps crying over Kashmir when it never belonged to the country.

“Kashmir has always been a part of India,” he said, reiterating the Government’s stand.

“Pakistan ban gaya toh hum aapke wajood ka samman karte hain (Since Pakistan was created, we respect its identity),” he said.

Singh further asked how can India talk to Pakistan when it keeps trying to destabilise India using terror.

India wants to have a good neighbourly relationship with Pakistan, but it should first stop exporting terror to India, he said asserting that Pakistan has no locus standi on Kashmir.

This is Singh’s first visit to Ladakh after it was carved out as a union territory from the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Defence Minister further said that Pakistan should focus on addressing human rights violations and atrocities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

He said that US Defense Secretary Mark Esper during a telephonic conversation told him that abrogation of provisions of Article 370 was an internal matter of India.

A spokesperson of the Defence Ministry in New Delhi had said that Esper appreciated the central government’s position that the recent developments in Jammu and Kashmir are an internal matter of India and he hoped that any issue between India and Pakistan would be resolved bilaterally.

Pakistan has been trying to gain global attention by raising the Kashmir issue at the United Nations.

Rajnath Singh had last week said that should bilateral talks happen, it would not be about Jammu and Kashmir, but on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the territory under Pakistan’s control since it invaded the region in 1947.

Earlier, he had made an intriguing statement saying that India’s nuclear policy till date has been ‘No First Use’ but “what happens in future depends on the circumstances”.

On August 5, the Government scrapped Article 370 of the Constitution and split the state into two union territories.

A day after the Indian government abrogated Article 370, Imran Khan had warned of “Pulwama-like incidents to happen again”.