Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said there were no differences between his party’s stand and that of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Kashmir, PTI reported.

The parliamentrian from Thiruvananthapuram said the BJP’s allegation that the Opposition party was backing Pakistan on the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was surprising, PTI reported. Tharoor clarified that Congress leaders were only speaking about the way Kashmiris should be treated.

“These allegations [by the BJP], that Pakistan is benefiting from our statements on the issue of Article 370, are surprising,” he said at an event in Indore. “We are not saying anything that will benefit or make Pakistan happy.” The MP said Islamabad had no right to interfere in Kashmir, calling it India’s internal matter.

However, Tharoor added that as the Opposition the Congress had every right to tell the Centre to abide by democratic processes “by taking along its people in the event of making major constitutional changes”. He claimed that the BJP was following the policies laid down by the previous Congress regime on international matters. “There is no difference between the Congress stand internationally with that of the Indian government on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

The Congress leader dismissed the need for third-party negotiations when asked about United States President Donald Trump’s mediation offer. “But, we cannot negotiate with Pakistan as long as the neighbouring country has a gun in one hand and a bomb in the other,” Tharoor added.

The Congress leader also lashed out at the Centre over Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks on refugees. He asked Shah if Muslim refugees were not welcome in the country, and added that this was not the India Mahatma Gandhi had struggled to free.

“People of Bengal are being misled about the NRC,” Shah had said at an event in Kolkata earlier this week. “I assure all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees they won’t have to leave the country, they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national.”

Tharoor, a former UN diplomat, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote a good article on Gandhi in The New York Times but added that his ideals should be followed. In the article, Modi called Gandhi a teacher who offers solutions to every problem – “from uniting those who believe in humanity to furthering sustainable development and ensuring economic self-reliance”.

Asked about Trump referring to Modi as “Father of India”, Tharoor said it was strange that the president was unaware that Modi was born after the country’s Independence. “It is not possible that children are born before their father,” he told PTI. “Modi sometimes does such things which denote that his idea is India was born in 2014.”

The parliamentarian also expressed concerns about the current economic condition, and said previous prime ministers in Congress-led governments had never claimed that everything was fine unlike Modi.

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