India today said the core issue was getting Masood Azhar designated as an international terrorist and it was immaterial if Pulwama and Kashmir were mentioned or not.Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the Ministry of External Affairs spokespersons said this at separate press conferences here today.

Jaitley was joined by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who credited PM Narendra Modi for his “persistent measures” that led to Azhar’s sanctioning.Jaitley went on to accuse the Congress of being ‘afraid’ of joining the BJP in celebrating this diplomatic victory. In addition to the binding obligation to implement the UNSC decision, Pakistan is also under pressure from the Financial Action Task Force, which wants it to demonstrate effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions against all UN-designated terrorists and their bagmen.

The Foreign Office dwelt on the absence of any reference to the Pulwama terror attack in the UNSC communiqué. “Please understand that our objective all along has been the designation of Masood Azhar as a terrorist. This process started in 2009 when Pulwama terror attack had not taken place,” he said.

“This is also why they are now claiming that they conducted surgical strikes. Those were invisible surgical strikes,” he added, referring to an interview by former PM Manmohan Singh that several unannounced surgical strikes were conducted against Pakistan during his tenure.

In an attempt to play down the Opposition’s claim that the sanctioning was trivial, Jaitley pointed out that the current dispensation succeeded in a task that had occupied the energy of successive governments for a decade.

The designation is not based on a specific incident but on the basis of the evidence shared with the members of the 1267 Sanctions Committee linking Azhar to terrorism.