ISLAMABAD: While Pakistan says its army has given a “matching response” to India in recent deadly border clashes along the disputed Jammu and Kashmir, lawmakers in the National Assembly demanded on Wednesday a firm tit for tat in words as well.

Several members of different parties denounced Tuesday’s warning by Indian Defence Minister Arun Jaitley that Pakistan would “feel the pain” if it persisted in alleged ceasefire violations as a manifestation of the new Indian government’s plan to end the special constitutional status of the Indian-held Kashmir to integrate it fully in the Indian union and suggested that the Pakistani response should be more firm rather than weak.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif came to a poorly attended house and heard some speeches in the later part of the debate on the situation arising from what a government motion moved on Monday called “indiscriminate and unprovoked firing and shelling on the border by Indian forces” along the Line of Control.

PML-N member Marvi Memon told the house in her speech earlier that the Kashmir situation had figured in a meeting prime minister held earlier in the day with leaders of all parliamentary parties that had stood with him in a standoff with protest sit-ins, outside the parliament house since mid-August.

Know more: India warns Pakistan of ‘more pain’ in border fighting

The issue briefly came up also in the Senate where Mian Raza Rabbani, parliamentary leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, demanded that either the prime minister or his Adviser on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz brief the upper house.

“Who are they to inflict pain on us?” PML-N lawmaker Awais Leghari, who is also chairman of the house standing committee on foreign affaires, said about Mr Jaitley’s threat in an interview with India’s NDTV network, adding that Pakistani forces were a much hardened lot after years of fighting against terrorism.

Conceding that Pakistani embassies abroad and their public relations officers were “not doing what is expected of them to expose the Indian designs”, Mr Leghari said that though “we don’t want war”, the other side must be paid in the same coin.

But the most forceful criticism of the Indian government came from opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) members Nafisa Shah and Shazia Marri, both of whom also lamented alleged foreign policy weaknesses of the PML-N government.

“I don’t think we are prepared to face new India,” Ms Shah said and wondered “what will happen to the Kashmir cause and Azad Kashmir” if the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeded in its aim to abolish the special constitutional status of the Indian-held Kashmir and integrate the territory with India.

Ms Shah talked of a “non-existent foreign policy” in an apparent reference to the absence of a foreign minister in the nearly 17-month-old PML-N government -- and said “we have to have some strong responses”.

Ms Marri asked why the prime minister could not find a suitable member of the National Assembly to be appointed foreign minister and said this was time for Pakistan to give strong response as a nuclear power rather than what she called academic response.

Yet she called for a resumption of the stalled peace talks between the two countries.

PML-N’s Ms Memon disagreed with the perception that Pakistan’s response to India had been weak, saying “we have responded decisively at every level”.

But she said some practical steps would have to be taken to draw world attention to the latest Indian action such as a visit to the affected areas of LoC and the Working Boundary by all members of the National Assembly on what is planned to be marked as a ‘black day” of protest on Oct 27.

The debate, which began on the first day of the session on Monday, is to continue on Thursday with a possible winding up speech by adviser Sartaj Aziz.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2014