He also said the Pakistan government had allocated Rs 127.43 crore for the first phase of the project.
(Reporting by Muhammad Anas Ahsan Mallick, Islamabad)
Pakistan has completed the process of land acquisition for the construction of the Kartarpur Corridor, the country's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said. He added that the Imran Khan government had also approved the allocation of Rs 2.5 billion Pakistan Rupees, which is about Rs 127.43 crore for the first of three phases of the project.
The Kartarpur Corridor is an emotive issue for the Sikhs of Punjab, which lies along the border with Pakistan. The Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib is believed to commemorate the location where Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru, settled to assemble the first Sikh community. He is believed to have lived there for about 18 years, till his death in 1539.
Access to the gurudwara, which lies 3.2 km inside Pakistan, has been a long-pending item on the wish list for Sikhs. In September 2018, the Pakistani government announced that it would open a corridor from its border with India to the shrine, and provide visa-free passage to Sikhs. The Indian government too approved its part of the construction and development of the project from Dera Baba Nanak to the border.
Qureshi used the platform to repeat his government's desire for peace and talks with India. "We want better ties with India and are committed to the Kartarpur Corridor. We would want to have a dialogue with India, but India is currently in their election mode," he said, not pointing out that India's freeze on formal talks with Pakistan predates the 'election mode', having become Indian government policy after the September 2016 attack on an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Uri.
Qureshi also expressed his government's desire to open another the Khokhrapar route of the border crossing in order to facilitate people to people contact from the Rajasthan side of India.
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