‘I’ll elevate troublesome points’: UK PM Boris Johnson on Jahangirpuri controversy

By PTI

LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday indicated that he can be elevating “difficult issues” when he meets his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday.

The troublesome points being referred to is prone to embody the controversial demolition of some properties as a part of an “anti-encroachment” drive by the BJP-ruled North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) within the Jahangirpuri space of north-west Delhi, days after communal clashes within the locality.

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Johnson was responding to questions from the UK media throughout a go to to a brand new bulldozer manufacturing unit in Gujarat’s Halol industrial space close to Vadodara arrange by British multinational JCB. “We always raise the difficult issues, of course we do, but the fact is that India is a country of 1.35 billion people and it is democratic, it’s the world’s largest democracy,” Johnson was quoted within the ‘Guardian’ newspaper as saying in response to questions.

The manufacturing unit go to got here beneath hearth on social media over JCB tools being concerned within the “anti-encroachment” demolitions in Delhi, which activists have claimed focused one explicit non secular neighborhood – a problem being thought of by the Supreme Court.

However, Johnson sought to spotlight the brand new Halol plant as a “living, breathing incarnation of the umbilicus between the UK and India”. “This is a world-leading factory – 600,000 diggers a year coming from India, exported from India to 110 countries with British technology,” he mentioned.

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The UK media additionally raised the difficulty of JCB chairman Anthony Bamford being a donor to Johnson’s Conservative Party and whether or not the go to was motivated by that connection. “No, he chose to go to the JCB factory because it is a very good illustration of UK business, working with India and the Indian government to benefit both the UK and India,” Johnson’s official spokesperson advised the ‘Guardian’.