EAM Sushma Swaraj, Punjab CM Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu were invited to the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor in Pakistan next week.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday said that Union Ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardip Singh Puri will attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor in Pakistan next week.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had earlier said that Islamabad had invited Swaraj to visit the country to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor on November 28.
A long-pending demand of the Sikh community to build a religious corridor linking India's border district of Gurdaspur with a historic gurudwara in Pakistan may finally be fulfilled with both the countries announcing that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.
Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities on the Pakistani side on November 28.
Apart from Swaraj, Qureshi also invited Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu to the ceremony.
"On behalf of Pakistan I have extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Capt Amarinder Singh & Navjot Singh Sidhu to attend the groundbreaking ceremony at Kartarpura on Nov 28, 2018," Qureshi tweeted.
In response to Qureshi, Swaraj wrote that she would not be able to attend the ceremony due to her prior commitments.
"Due to my prior commitments, including election campaign scheduled in the state of Telangana on that day, I would not be able to travel to Kartarpur Sahib," Swaraj wrote.
She said that Mrs Badal, Minister for Food Processing Industries, and Mr Puri, Minister of State (IC) for Housing & Urban Affairs, will attend the ceremony as India's representatives.
"It is our hope that the Government of Pakistan will expedite the construction of the corridor in order to ensure that our citizens can pay their respects at the Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib using the corridor as soon as possible," Swaraj said in the letter.
Amarinder Singh has invited Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the speaker of the Assembly in Pakistan's Punjab province, to attend a similar ceremony on the Indian side on November 26, according to officials.
The India-Pakistan ties nose-dived in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place. The ties between the two countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016.
India called off a meeting between Swaraj and Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, citing the "brutal" killing of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir and the release of the postal stamps "glorifying" Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday hoped that the Kartarpur corridor would act as a bridge between the peoples of India and Pakistan that might lead to a better future as he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the importance of people-to-people contact.
Pakistan Foreign Office on Friday said the "Kartarpur Spirit can be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship."
(With PTI inputs)
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