Entire J&K integral part of India, no unilateral steps acceptable: MEA on Pakistan's plan to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as 5th province

Pic courtesy: ANI

Delhi: A day after it was reported that Pakistan was planning to declare the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region as the fifth province, India on Thursday said that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India.

"Entire state of J&K is an integral part of India, no unilateral step acceptable," MEA spokesperson said when asked about Pakistan's plan regarding Gilgit-Baltistan.

Yesterday, Pakistan's minister for inter-provincial coordination Riaz Hussain Pirzada had told Geo TV that a committee headed by Advisor of Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz had proposed giving the status of a province to Gilgit-Baltistan.

"The committee recommended that Gilgit-Baltistan should be made a province of Pakistan," Pirzada had said yesterday, as per PTI.

He had also said that a constitutional amendment would be made to change the status of the region, through which the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes.

Gilgit-Baltistan is treated as a separate geographical entity by Pakistan. It has a regional assembly and an elected CM.

Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh are four provinces of Pakistan.

It is believed that China's concerns about the unsettled status of Gilgit-Baltistan prompted Pakistan to change its status.

 According to an earlier report in Dawn newspaper, Pakistan was mulling to elevate the constitutional status of the region in a bid to provide legal cover to the CPEC.

The move could signal a historic shift in the country's position on the future of the wider Kashmir region, the paper had quoted experts as saying. 

(With PTI inputs)