New Delhi (Sputnik): The Supreme Court of India has imposed penalty on a former RAW officer who had filed an application seeking to reclaim the Pakistani side of Kashmir and other areas such as Gilgit. The plea filed by Ram Kumar Yadav was seeking a direction to the government to declare the Pakistani side of Kashmir and Gilgit as an Indian parliamentary constituency.
“This Public Interest Litigation is ex-facie untenable. You come to the judiciary with such a prayer? There cannot be any judicial interference here. We cannot pass such orders", the Bench said while delivering its remarks against the plea filed by Yadav.
The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has also imposed a fine of around $700 on the former RAW official for filing the petition. In the plea, Yadav asked the court to give direction to the government to carve out 24 assembly constituencies and two parliamentary constituencies and conduct elections there.
The issue of Kashmir came into the limelight in 2016 after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought up the issue during his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort.
The Indian government has reiterated since then that only dispute between India and Pakistan as far as Kashmir is concerned is the "illegal occupation of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan by Pakistan".
The Modi government claimed that the Indian government had already passed a resolution in 1994 regarding this, saying it was something that all the political parties had supported. Under the China-Pakistan “Boundary Agreement” of 1963, Pakistan ceded 5,180 square kilometres of Kashmiri territory to China, which India termed "illegal".
Pakistan claims legal rights over Gilgit-Baltistan through an agreement signed by the so-called Azad Kashmir government that ceded control of the region to Pakistan in 1949.