India is moving to “rationalise the presence” of the U.N. Monitoring Group on India and Pakistan that has been stationed on both sides of the LoC since 1949.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) confirmed that the U.N. Mission has been asked to vacate its office in a government allotted bungalow in Delhi, through a notice from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which deals with the mission.
“As part of this exercise, we have also monetised some of the facilities that Unmogip had been availing free of cost till now,” said MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin on Tuesday. Sources told The Hindu , those facilities include subsidised army food rations, oil, fuel for generators, transportation, medical facilities and accommodations in four locations in Jammu and Kashmir as well.
The MoD has made it clear that all these extra facilities that were part of the original arrangement decades ago, would no longer be offered to the peacekeeping mission, although the Unmogip is welcome to move to a private accommodation in New Delhi. The Unmogip’s office in Srinagar, which is often the destination of protests by separatist groups and human rights activists, however, will continue to function. Major Nicolas Diaz, in charge of the Delhi office told Reuters that the observers’ group would continue to operate in line with the U.N. mandate and that it was looking at alternative accommodation.
Explaining the decision to make the Unmogip vacate its Delhi office, Mr. Akbaruddin said it was “consistent with India’s long-standing view that Unmogip has outlived its mandate. India considers the mission’s mandate existed only until the 1949 “Karachi agreement” lapsed, which India believes took place during the India-Pakistan war in 1971 when many parts of the ceasefire line were changed. And ever since the Simla agreement, stipulating a bilateral solution to the Kashmir issue, was signed by Mrs. Gandhi and Mr. Z.A. Bhutto in 1972, India has refused to acknowledge the role of the U.N. in the dispute at all. In fact, while Pakistan has lodged several complaints with the Unmogip for ceasefire violations on the LoC, including invoking the U.N. group during the heavy firing in January 2013, India has not made a single complaint since 1972.
Sources said the new action had been “in the works for a while,” but didn’t explain why the decision to move against the U.N. mission hadn’t been taken in all the intervening 42 years. Mr. Akbaruddin also said that with budgetary constraints in every Ministry, it would be impossible to continue “goodwill gestures” to the mission. Working with a biennial budget of $19 million, the Unmogip splits its operational headquarters between Islamabad and Srinagar, and has 40 military personnel and 23 civilian international personnel, along with 45 Indians and Pakistanis on its rolls.
