Kartarpur corridor: India sends reminder to Pak to hold meetings to finalise key decisions

India has sent a reminder to Pakistan to hold technical level meetings to finalize key decisions relating to the proposed Kartarpur corridor, linking Darbar Sahib in Pakistan's Kartarpur with Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district, official sources said Saturday. India had proposed that technical level meetings should be held in the first week of August. However, the sources said Pakistan is yet to respond to it, prompting the Indian side to send a reminder to them.

India had called for the meetings to be held to work out arrangements and finalize the alignment of the interim approach road for the Kartarpur corridor, develop a mechanism to share information about pilgrims between nodal points, develop a mechanism to deal with exigencies that arise from the use of the corridor. India had also shared a proposal to finalize the agreement to operationalize the Kartarpur corridor.

India hopes Pakistan will respond expeditiously on these proposals in order to get the Kartarpur corridor ready in time for the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak in November this year. In November 2018, Pakistan agreed to set up the border-crossing linking Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, the final resting place of Sikh faith founder Guru Nanak, to Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district.

Kartarpur is located in Pakistan's Narowal district across the Ravi river, about four km from Dera Baba Nanak. Technical experts of the two countries met on March 19 during which alignment, coordinates and several other engineering aspects of the proposed corridor were discussed. They also held a meeting on May 27.

A meeting between delegations of the two countries on the Pakistani side of the Attari-Wagah border was also held on July 14 to discuss the modalities of the Kartarpur corridor. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had, on November 26 last year, laid the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor in Gurdaspur district.

Two days later, the Pakistani prime minister laid the foundation stone of the corridor in Narowal, around 125 km from Lahore.