'Did Indira govt sign Simla pact under US pressure', Nishikant Dubey asks 3 questions

New Delhi, June 23 (IANS) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey mounted a fresh attack on the Congress party on Monday, accusing the then Indira Gandhi government of capitulating to US pressure, while signing the Simla agreement.

The BJP lawmaker, mocking the Iron Lady - an epithet used for Indira Gandhi, also posed three pointed questions and shared a document on X, containing proceedings of the Rajya Sabha debate.

He asked, “Why did the Iron Lady give 5000 square miles of occupied Indian territory to Pakistan?”

He further asked, “ Under whose pressure did we leave our 30,000 square miles of territory with Pakistan?

“Instead of returning 93,000 soldiers, why did 56 Indian soldiers die in the Pakistani jail?” he queried.

Sharing the details of Parliamentary proceedings on his social media handle, the BJP MP claimed that neither the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi nor the then Foreign Minister Swaran Singh answered the questions raised by Congress party member and former Defence Minister Mahavir Tyagi and BJP/Jan Sangh senior leader Bhai Mahavirji.

He accused the grand old party of befooling the public by peddling a fake narrative of India’s weakness under the current government while concealing its own historic failures and subjugations before the world powers.

Notably, the Simla Agreement was a bilateral treaty between India and Pakistan, signed by former PM Indira Gandhi and the then-Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. This accord was signed in the aftermath of the 1971 India-Pakistan war, which led to the bifurcation of East and West Pakistan and the creation of an independent Bangladesh.

The agreement marked a formal end to hostilities between the two nations and laid out a roadmap for future engagements, based on peaceful coexistence and bilateralism -- a principle that continues to shape India's diplomatic posture.

--IANS

mr/dpb