PoK not part of its territory, says Pakistan

The Pakistan government has said people in the northern areas of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir cannot be granted rights under the Pakistani constitution because they are not part of the country.

''The grant of constitutional rights to these people will amount to unilateral annexation of these areas," representatives of the Nawaz Sharief government told a full bench of the Punjab high court, which is hearing a petition seeking constitutional rights for the people of PoK.

The government submitted that the northern areas did not figure in the territories of Pakistan mentioned in the country's constitution. It said the areas were part of Kashmir and that Pakistan's claim that the whole state belonged to it would be weakened if it granted constitutional rights to the people of the northern areas.

To many Pakistanis, the government's stand might seem puzzling, especially due to its claims in the past seven years that the whole of Kashmir belonged to it and not to India. The implication was that the Kashmir issue concerns only the part of the state with India and that there was no dispute about the legitimacy of PoK. Many Pakistanis even believed PoK was part of Pakistan.

In 1995, when a minister of Benazir Bhutto's cabinet said PoK was not a part of Pakistan, he unwittingly stirred up a hornet's nest with members of parliament and the newspapers attacking him. No one came to his defence.

Earlier, in 1993, the PoK high court stated that northern areas were not a part of Pakistan and that its administration must be handed over to the government in Muzaffarabad. The Pakistan government challenged this in the Supreme Court, which upheld the high court ruling except that it did not hand over administration of these areas to Muzaffarabad.