India dismissed Pakistan’s reference to Jammu and Kashmir at the United Nations Security Council’s ‘Leadership for Peace’ debate on Monday, saying a country that jails its prime minister and gives lifetime immunity to its army chief is in no position to lecture India, neither expected to fulfil its designated responsibilities.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, delivered a strong response after Pakistan's Ambassador, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, raised the issues of Jammu & Kashmir and the Indus Waters Treaty during the open debate.
“Pakistan’s unwarranted reference to Jammu and Kashmir in today’s open debate attests to its obsessive focus on harming India and its people. A serving non-permanent Security Council Member that chooses to further this obsession in all meetings and platforms of the UN in pursuit of its divisive agenda cannot be expected to fulfil its designated responsibilities and obligations,” he said.
“Let me be clear – India will counter Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in all its forms and manifestations with all its might,” Harish added.
Rejecting the Pakistani envoy’s assertion that the issue of Jammu & Kashmir should be settled in accordance with the UN Charter, relevant Security Council resolutions and the will of the Kashmiri people, Harish said Pakistan “has a unique way of respecting the will of its people by jailing a prime minister, banning the ruling political party, and letting its armed forces engineer a constitutional coup through the 27th amendment and giving life-time immunity to its Chief of Defence Forces”.
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Harish was referring to former Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, who has been imprisoned since his arrest in August 2023 on corruption charges and has reportedly been held for extended periods in solitary confinement.
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has urged the Pakistani government to take immediate action to address reports of Khan’s “inhumane and undignified” detention conditions, warning that they may amount to torture or other ill-treatment.
Additionally, the 27th Constitutional Amendment which was passed last month under Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gave the country’s Chief of Defence Forces and army chief Field Marshal, Asim Munir, lifelong immunity from any legal prosecution.
Laying emphasis on the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to be an integral and inalienable part of India, Harish further said: “They were, are, and will always remain so.”
On the contentious topic of the Indus Waters Treaty, the Indian envoy said India had signed the treaty 65 years ago “in good faith, in a spirit of goodwill and friendship”, which Pakistan exploited.
“Throughout these six and a half decades, Pakistan has violated the spirit of the Treaty by inflicting three wars and thousands of terror attacks on India,” he said.
“In the last four decades, tens of thousands of Indian lives have been lost in Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks, the most recent of which was the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, which involved religion-based targeted killings of 26 innocent civilians,” he said, adding that India will continue to hold the treaty in abeyance “until Pakistan, which is a global epicentre of terror, credibly and irrevocably ends its support for cross-border and all other forms of terrorism”.
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