From Friday, DD weather forecasts will send a daily reminder to Pakistan

A senior government official told Hindustan Times that Doordarshan National, DD News, All India Radio and Kashir channels had been told to include these territories in its daily weather bulletins along with other places in the country.

Updated on: May 8, 2020, 06:09:06 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

State-run broadcaster Doordarshan will start including weather forecasts for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas from Friday, a move designed to deliver a daily message to Islamabad that it was holding on to these territories illegally.

A senior government official told Hindustan Times that Doordarshan National, DD News, All India Radio and Kashir channels had been told to include these territories in its daily weather bulletins along with other places in the country. Doordarshan’s Kashmir channel is telecast in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Doordarshan’s weather bulletin will have forecasts for Mirpur and Muzaffarabad in Occupied Kashmir and Gilgit in Northern Areas.

“The step will also be a constant reminder to the Imran Khan government and its few supporters that India will not allow Islamabad to take any steps to legitimise its illegal occupation,” said a senior government official.

The decision coincided with New Delhi’s strong protests this week over the order of Pakistan’s top court that provided for setting up a caretaker administration in Gilgit-Baltistan to hold fresh elections.

India claims the whole of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, including the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which was given near-provincial status by the Pakistan government in 2009.

Also Watch: ‘They want riots...’: PoK activist on Pakistan bid to hold Gilgit Baltistan polls

In January 2019, Pakistan’s top court had ruled that its powers extended to “Gilgit-Baltistan” provoking sharp protest from New Delhi, which declared “the so-called ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’, has been, is and shall remain an integral part of India”.

Last week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court went a step further and allowed the government to amend the Government of Gilgit-Baltistan Order 2018 to set up a caretaker administration in the region to conduct fresh elections. The order was issued in response to a petition filed by the Imran Khan government.

Also Read: First CPEC and now China’s Covid-19: Gilgit-Baltistan’s growing woes | Opinion

On May 4, the Ministry of External Affairs issued a demarche, a formal diplomatic note, on a senior Pakistan diplomat stationed in the national capital.

New Delhi said neither Islamabad nor its judiciary had any locus standi on territories illegally and forcibly occupied by it.

“India completely rejects such actions and continued attempts to bring material changes in Pakistan occupied areas of the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Instead Pakistan should immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation,” the written protest read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.