Opposition’s Privilege Motion against Sushma Swaraj on India’s foreign policy: Full text

Rubbishing Opposition’s remarks that India-Pakistan ties had hit a new low, Swaraj had said, after the terror attack on Pathankot Airbase on January 1, 2016, Pakistan had shed its age-old-practice of being in denial and even set up an investigating team to probe the incident.

She added that India will start a dialogue with Pakistan the day it stops promoting terrorism against this country and reiterated New Delhi’s red line that terror and talks cannot go together. “You are asking what is our Pakistan road map? We had declared it even before the swearing-in. We had invited prime ministers of all the neighbouring countries and all came… Bilateral meetings were also held and I was present,” Swaraj had said.

The opposition was also unconvinced with Swaraj’s clarification for erring to mention former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s name at 60th anniversary of Bandung Conference, and India’s foreign policy decisions relating to Pakistan and passed a privileged motion against the External Affairs Minister.

Full Text of privilege motion Under Rule 188:

We seek to draw your kind and urgent attention to the statement given by Smt Sushma Swaraj, Minister for External Affairs on 3rd August, 2017, during reply to short duration discussion on “India’s foreign policy and engagement with strategic partners” which was fallacious with an intent to mislead the House.

During the discussion, many members had raised the issue of deteriorating relations with our neighbouring countries especially Pakistan. Shri Anand Sharma had specifically raised the issue that Prime Minister had visited Pakistan while returning from Afaganistan on an unscheduled visit to wish Mr Nawaz Sharif on his birthday on 25th December 2015 but in response to which India was greeted by one of the worst terrorist attack on its air force base in Pathankot immediately thereafter on 2nd January 2016.

However, while replying to the discussion, Smt Sushma Swaraj, Minister for External Affairs stated that India was having very cordial relations with Pakistan and was engaged in peace talks with Pakistan since the formation of NDA government till the encounter of Burhan Wani (which happened on 8th July 2016) after which Pakistan PM Shri Nawaz Sharif declared him to be a freedom fighter and then the relations deteriorated.

This statement is totally false because as mentioned earlier, immediately after PM’s visit to Lahore on 25th December 2015, Pathankot Air Force base was attacked by Pakistan based terrorists on 2nd January 2016. There were increase in terrorist violence especially against the security forces immediately thereafter which can be seen from the following table containing list of major incidents of terrorist violence in J&K from January 2016 to August 2016, i.e, before Burhan Wani’s death.

The incidents of ceasefire violations across the Line of Control (LOC) also increased to 583 in 2014, 405 in 2015 and 449 in 2016.

Minister for External Affairs has misled the House by giving a false statement on the floor of the House that the relations with Pakistan were improving till Burhan Wani was killed.