Kartarpur corridor: Amarinder declines, Sidhu accepts Pak invite

Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Sunday declined Pakistan's invite to attend the ground-breaking ceremony for the Kartarpur Corridor on the other side of the border, even as his cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu accepted the request with "with unalloyed joy".

In a letter to Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Singh said it is a historic occasion, but regretted his inability to be present, citing terror attacks in his state and killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistan troops as the reason.

"Firstly, not a day passes when Indian soldiers are not killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating," he said.

Secondly, the chief minister claimed, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has started its nefarious activities in Punjab.

"I hope that the (Pakistan) prime minister will understand the circumstances... It will not be possible for me to be present in Pakistan on this historic occasion, even though paying my respects at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib has always been my cherished dream," he said.

However, state cabinet minister Sidhu, who had been advocating a corridor connecting Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in

Pakistan's Kartarpur with Dera Baba Nanak Sahib in Punjab's Gurdaspur, on Sunday wrote to Qureshi, accepting his invitation.