Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday asked the residents of Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) to come and join India as “we consider you as our own unlike Pakistan which treats you as foreigners”.

Rajnath Singh was addressing BJP election rallies in Ramban and Banihal areas of the Jammu division.

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The Defence Minister said recently an affidavit was filed by the additional solicitor general in Pakistan stating that PoJK is a foreign land. “I want to tell PoJK residents that Pakistan is considering you a foreigner but the people in India do not consider you as such. We consider you as our own and so, come and join us,” he said.

”Under the BJP government in J&K, there will be so much development on this side that the people in PoJK on seeing this would say that we do not want to live with Pakistan and instead will go to India,” he said.

The Minister came down heavily on the National Conference-Congress alliance over its poll promise of restoring Article 370 and said it is impossible as long as the BJP is there.

He welcomed the “sea change” in the overall security situation in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, and said ”youths now carry laptops and computers instead of pistols and revolvers. We have abrogated Article 370 for the prosperity of J&K. No one has the courage to restore Article 370.”

“I say with confidence that if the BJP government runs here for ten years, J&K will become the number one state of India”, he added.

He strongly criticised National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah for his remarks on the execution of Afzal Guru, the 2001 Parliament attack convict. Rajnath Singh questioned Omar, saying, “Should Afzal Guru not have been hanged? Should he have been publicly garlanded instead?”