Old news of removal of J&K from UN’s alleged ‘disputed list’ shared as recent development during BJP rule

A post carrying an image of the Indian PM Modi and a map of erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir territory is being widely shared with the claim “Jammu and Kashmir is out of the UN’s dispute list, that means according to the world it is no longer a disputed area, if Modi is there then it is possible”. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.

Claim: During PM Modi’s rule, Jammu & Kashmir has been removed from the United Nations list of unresolved disputes.
Fact: No such list of unresolved disputes is available on UN website. The context of this news is the 65^th UN General Assembly annual meeting held in November 2010. When the then President of Security Council Mark Grant, during a speech on long standing unresolved disputes, did not mention Jammu & Kashmir issue, Pakistan protested as they were asking the U.N. to intervene to help resolve the issue. Moreover, Manmohan Singh was the PM of India during this period. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.

Internet search with the relevant keywords led us to news articles published by The Indian Express, The Hindu and Economic Times in November 2010 regarding this issue.

The context of this news is the 65^th UN General Assembly annual meeting on ‘Long- standing issue of Security Council reform’ held in November 2010. During his speech, then UK’s Envoy to United nations and president of Security Council for that month, Mark Lyall Grant said, “Throughout the reporting period, some situations in which the Council was engaged remained unresolved. Those included, in particular, the situation in the Middle East, Cyprus and Western Sahara. New situations had emerged in Nepal, Guinea Bissau and other States, while huge challenges remained in some places, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo”. Meanwhile, the omission of the Jammu & Kashmir issue from this speech has come as a setback to Pakistan as they were asking the U.N. to intervene to help resolve the issue, but India has always maintained that the dispute must be resolved bilaterally.

Following this, Amjad Hussain B Sial, Pakistan’s acting envoy to the UN said, “Jammu and Kashmir dispute was not mentioned in the context of unresolved long-running situations. We understand this was an inadvertent omission, as J&K is one of the oldest disputes on agenda of the Security Council”. However, we couldn’t find any such official “list of unresolved disputes” on the United Nations website. Moreover, during this period, UPA’s Manmohan Singh was the PM of India and not Narendra Modi.