‘Two-thirds of Indians ready to come towards Pakistanis,’ says Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar

In a session titled ‘Hijr Ki Rakh, Visaal Kay Phool, Indo-Pak affairs’ at the Faiz Festival in Lahore's Alhamra, veteran Congress leader and former Union Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, highlighted that since PM Modi has consistently failed to secure more than one-third of the votes in elections, the Indian electoral system often translates this into a two-thirds majority in seats.

As a result, a significant portion of the Indian population may be inclined towards certain perspectives or actions, Dawn reported.

According to the report, Aiyar said, “All I ask the people (of Pakistan) is to remember that Modi has never received more than one-third of the votes but our system is such that if has one-third of the votes, he has two-thirds in the seats. So two-thirds of Indians are ready to come towards you (Pakistanis).”

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Aiyar further referred to Pakistan as the ‘biggest asset of India’, and expressed his fondness for Pakistan and its people, noting that he had never experienced such warm hospitality in any other country.

According to the Pakistan Daily, Aiyar, while addressing an event in Lahore, said, “The Pakistanis, from my experience, have been the people who perhaps overreact to the other side. If we are friendly, they are over-friendly, and if we are hostile, they get overly hostile.”

“Aiyar said that goodwill was needed but instead of goodwill, there had been something opposite during the last 10 years since the formation of the first Narendra Modi government,” as reported by Dawn.

Also Read: India has thwarted Pakistan's cross-border terrorism plan by not ‘playing that game’: S Jaishankar

Reacting to Aiyar's comment, BJP leader Uday B Garudachar said that we would love for Pakistan to behave with us and lead a nice life along with us.

As reported by PTI, Garudachar said, “Everybody across the world is fine with you, as long as you're fine. If we fool around, they will also fool around. It is his (Mani Shankar Aiyar's) personal view. We would love for Pakistan to behave with us and lead a nice life along with us so that there's harmony amongst both countries.”

Earlier, India's External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, stated that Pakistan's fundamental strategy has been to employ cross-border terrorism to compel India to engage in negotiations. He further emphasized that India has rendered this approach obsolete by refusing to participate in such tactics.

Also Read: Jaishankar slams Pakistan on cross-border terrorism, takes on China

“What Pakistan was trying to do, not now but over multiple decades, was really to use cross-border terrorism to bring India to the table. That, in essence, was its core policy. We have made that irrelevant by not playing that game now,” Jaishankar said.

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Furthermore, EAM had stressed that it's not a case that we won't deal with a neighbour. “After all, at the end of the day, a neighbour is a neighbour, but it is that we will not deal based on terms that they set where the practice of terrorism is deemed as legitimate and effective to bring you to the table,” the External Affairs Minister said.

(With inputs from agencies)