India tells the UN the OIC cannot tell victim from perpetrator on Pakistan strikes

India told the UN General Assembly's Sixth Committee on Tuesday that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation could not "separate fact from fiction" or "distinguish between victim and perpetrator" when it spoke about Jammu and Kashmir and about Indian strikes on targets in Pakistan. BJP MP Biplab Kumar Deb, from West Tripura, delivered the national statement on "Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism." He is one of 15 Indian MPs in New York for a familiarisation week.

Deb was answering a statement read by Saudi Arabia as chair of the OIC. The OIC text did not name India. It referred to "unjustified strikes" on "multiple locations in Pakistan", to a "military escalation in Southeast Asia", and to Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir. Indian officials read both passages as aimed at New Delhi's retaliation after the Pahalgam massacre last year, which the government says was planned by a Pakistan-based group, and at the standing OIC line on Kashmir.

Deb said he was addressing "the statement delivered by the chair of the OIC on India's focused and measured actions against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, from where terrorist attacks against India were planned and directed." He called it regrettable that those delivering the statement were "unable to separate fact from fiction and distinguish between victim and perpetrator." He added that India "has the full right to protect its people against terrorism on the border coming from Pakistan" and that "there will be consequences for indulging in terrorism."

On the reference to Jammu and Kashmir, he rejected what he called an "unwarranted" mention of the Union Territory and turned the point back. "The OIC chair would do better to focus on Pakistan's illegal occupation, especially in Rawalakot, where wanton killings, brutal violence and the denial of basic rights to the people living there are so visible. Such willful blindness only speaks of bigotry and intolerance." The Sixth Committee is the Assembly's legal committee. A statement there does not bind anyone. It does put a formulation on the record that other delegations can quote.

The timing sits against a file New Delhi has been pressing since Pahalgam: that cross-border attacks planned from Pakistani territory, including areas India calls Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, will draw a military reply, and that the reply should be treated as a counter-terror operation rather than as a dispute over Kashmir's status. The OIC's choice of words, "unjustified strikes" and a citation of the old Security Council resolutions, is the opposite reading. Deb's job on Tuesday was to refuse that reading in the room where the OIC had just offered it.

Rawalakot is a specific choice, not a generic one. It is the main town of Poonch district on the Pakistani-administered side of the Line of Control, in the region Pakistan calls Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Indian statements rarely name it. By doing so, Deb shifted the OIC's Kashmir paragraph from a status question to a conduct question: what happens in a named town under Pakistani administration. He did not offer new evidence on Rawalakot in the speech. The point was jurisdictional. India does not accept the OIC as a party to the file, and it does not accept the Security Council resolutions the OIC cited as the frame for a debate on terrorism.

The delegation context matters for how the line will travel. A familiarisation week is not a Security Council session. Deb is not the permanent representative. The statement is still India's statement: the mission in New York assigns the speaking slot, and the text is cleared in Delhi. Using an MP rather than a diplomat puts a political voice on a legal agenda item, which is useful at home and slightly harder to walk back abroad. The phrase "focused and measured actions" is the same formula Indian ministers have used since the strikes that followed Pahalgam. Tuesday's addition is the explicit answer to the OIC chair, and the Rawalakot clause.

Saudi Arabia's role is the awkward part for both sides. Riyadh holds the OIC chair and read the text. It is also a country India has spent a decade courting on energy, investment and the corridor projects that run through the Gulf. The statement was delivered "on behalf of the OIC", which lets Riyadh say it was chairing, not speaking for itself. Delhi's reply did not name Saudi Arabia. It named the chair. That is a distinction the Indian mission will want kept.

Nothing in the Sixth Committee changes the military facts. It does fix the competing sentences. The OIC's sentence is "unjustified strikes" plus the old Kashmir resolutions. India's sentence is "terror infrastructure" in Pakistan and in Rawalakot, and a right of reply. The next time either side speaks on the item, those two sentences are what the other will be answering.