Pak, Indian parliamentarians face off over Article 370 in Male

New Delhi: India and Pakistan on Sunday got engaged in a heated exchange during the South Asian Speakers’ Summit in the Maldives after the Pakistani side tried to raise the issue of abrogation of Article 370 provisions for Jammu and Kashmir, a report said.

The Pakistani representative referred to the Kashmir issue after which a point of order was raised by India and a strong rebuttal was given by Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh, PTI news agency said.

“We strongly object to raising the internal issue of India here and we also reject the politicisation of this forum by raising issues which are extraneous to this summit,” Harivansh was quoted as saying by the report.

An unidentified Pakistani delegate was heard in footage aired by Maldives’s Raajje TV as strongly objecting to Harivansh describing Pakistan as a supporter of terrorism. The footage more than two minutes long posted on Twitter also showed Maldives’ parliament speaker Mohammed Nasheed trying to calm the two sides down.

The Indian delegation in the summit is led by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.

Tensions between India and Pakistan spiked after India abrogated provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and bifurcated it into two Union Territories.

Pakistan has been trying to raise the issue at various international fora, but India has maintained that it is an internal matter.