Sidhu reaches Pakistan, defends hugging Qamar Bajwa

Lahore, Nov 27: Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday reached Pakistan to attend the ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor which will be held tomorrow. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities at on the Pakistan side on November 28.

Sidhu entered Pakistan by crossing crosses Attari-Wagah border in Punjab. Sidhu was invited by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to attend groundbreaking ceremony of Kartarpur Corridor on 28th November.

"This is a corridor of infinite possibilities, of peace, of prosperity, of opening up of trade relations. I feel that this corridor will be a bridge and erase enmity. It will increase people to people contact and bring peace. It is my belief that there are possibilities in it," he told the media is Lahore.

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will not visit Pakistan to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor for Sikh pilgrims. She had been invited by her counterpart Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Thanking Qureshi, Swaraj said Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Puri will travel to Pakistan instead.

The hug(with Pakistan Army Chief) was for hardly a second, it was not a #RafaleDeal . When two Punjabis meet they hug each other, its normal practice in Punjab.: Navjot Sidhu in Lahore pic.twitter.com/zZemyh0qls

— ANI (@ANI) November 27, 2018

A long-pending demand of the Sikh community to build a religious corridor linking India's border district of Gurdaspur with a historic gurudwara in Pakistan is set to be fulfilled with both the countries announcing that they would develop the stretch.

In August, Sidhu's visit to Pakistan for Khan's swearing-in had come under fire from opposition parties for his hug to Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa. Sidhu had claimed that Gen Bajwa had told him about "making efforts to open the Kartarpur corridor".