Assembly polls over, Pak back in focus

Re-engagement with Islamabad before the end of the year cannot be ruled out

Obscured by the din of the Uttar Pradesh victory (we’ll take the adjectives as read) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), some important foreign policy footwork by the government in relation to Pakistan has not got full attention.

As BJP politicians headed to Lucknow to celebrate the party’s victory, another set of BJP members of Parliament (MP) — notably Meenakshi Lekhi and Swapan Dasgupta —along with Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, travelled to Murree, Pakistan’s iconic hill station. The purpose was to attend the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA), an association of parliaments in Asia along the lines of the International Parliamentary Union