Explainer: Pakistan Occupied Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh

India’s case admits no ambiguity. The accession of 1947 was absolute: a lawful, unconditional and final transfer of the whole State to India, made by its sole competent authority and ratified by its elected assembly, and its integration into the Union is complete and irreversible. The boundaries are not vague or negotiable; they are the defined limits of the former princely State, every square kilometre of which, from Jammu to Gilgit, from the Kashmir Valley to Aksai Chin, is Indian territory in law. Within those boundaries there is one sovereign and only one. What Pakistan calls “Azad” Kashmir and the “Northern Areas,” and what China holds in Aksai Chin and Shaksgam, are not disputed lands of open ownership but Indian territory under foreign occupation, taken by force or ceded without title and held against the law. The question, correctly stated, has never been to whom Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh belong. It is when the occupying powers will leave.