Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Ladakh Jamyang Tsering Namgyal on Saturday said he was happy that Ladakh was discussed at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday after the Narendra Modi-led administration decided to repeal Article 370, taking away Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and splitting the region into two Union Territories, ANI reported.

“Earlier when Congress was in power, Ladakh was not even discussed in the Parliament let alone at the UN council,” the parliamentarian was quoted as saying by ANI.

China, a permanent member of the UNSC and an ally of Pakistan, had sought the meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the developments in Jammu and Kashmir.

“How the Indian government develops one of its regions is an internal matter, if the neighbours have a problem with it, we cannot do anything,” Namgyal said. “Ladakh is an integral part of India, it is one of India’s invaluable jewels, and how to handle it is an internal matter of the country.”

The MP said the people of Ladakh would always back the Centre’s decision.

The Congress criticised the MP’s comments and said Jammu and Kashmir was an internal matter. “Perhaps the Honourable BJP MP from Ladakh needs to be reminded that Jammu & Kashmir is an internal issue & no external organisation can assert to the contrary,” it said on Twitter. “Unless the BJP has taken a U-turn on the matter.”

In an interview to PTI on Sunday, Namgyal said Congress governments had ruined Kashmir by following the policy of “appeasement” in hostile situations and Ladakh became a “collateral damage”.

“Jawaharlal Nehru formulated the ‘forward policy’, which said we should move towards China inch by inch,” he said. “During its implementation, it became a ‘backward policy’. The [Chinese troops] continued to intrude into our territory and we continued to retreat.”

He alleged this was the reason why Aksai Chin, a disputed border area, was completely under China. “The People’s Liberation Army personnel have come up to Demchok’s ‘nallah’ [canal] because Ladakh didn’t get due importance in defence policies in the 55 years of Congress rule,” the 34-year-old alleged.

Namgyal said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s attack on Centre’s decision to scrap Article 370 was to “keep his chair safe” and said that the people of Ladakh were not bothered by what he said.

The parliamentarian’s speech in the Lok Sabha after the abrogation of special status to Jammu and Kashmir was appreciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Namgyal had said that Ladakh felt stifled by Jammu and Kashmir’s decision-making apparatus, which was centred in Srinagar. He had strongly endorsed the move to split the state into separate Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.