Congress leader Manish Tewari on Sunday trashed the Hurriyat's demand that there should be an interlocutor in the dialogue process between India and Pakistan, refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the separatist faction.
"Pakistan patronises separatists and terrorists and exports terror to India. The government must send out a message - that if you continue to support a state policy of terrorism against India, if you are going to continue to patronise elements who are inimical to the unity and integrity of India, then Pakistan has no place in the Indian scheme of things," Congress leader Manish Tewari told ANI.
"Till Pakistan stops exporting terror, there is no locus to talk to Pakistan. As far as the separatists are concerned, India does not need an interlocutor to talk to Pakistan, especially one that has no legitimacy," he added.
Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir Minister of State for Public Works Department and Revenue Sunil Kumar Sharma said that India would hold talks with the Hurriyat only if the demands are made in national interest.
"Pakistan has crossed the limit by inviting the separatist leaders. The BJP government at the Centre is taking this very seriously. If the demand of the Hurriyat is in the national interest, only then will we hold talks with them," he said.
Earlier in the day, Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir must be engaged in the dialogue between India and Pakistan, calling for talks to be held at a bureaucratic as well as political level.
The Hurriyat presence at the Pakistan Day celebrations comes after the meeting held between separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Islamabad's envoy Abdul Basit in New Delhi earlier on March 9.
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Basit and Geelani had reportedly discussed the political developments in Jammu and Kashmir, with the Pakistani envoy also appraising the separatist leader of Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar's visit to Islamabad.
Pakistan Day commemorates the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and the adoption of the first constitution of the country during its transition into an Islamic Republic on March 23, 1956.