New Delhi: India on Tuesday (May 26) rejected “unwarranted references” to Jammu and Kashmir in the China-Pakistan joint statement issued the previous day and also objected to the two sides taking up infrastructure and water cooperation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.In a statement the external affairs ministry said India “categorically rejects” the “unwarranted references” to Jammu and Kashmir in the joint statement. New Delhi’s position – namely that J&K and Ladakh have been, are and will be “integral and inalienable parts of India” – is “consistent and well known to the concerned parties” and “no other country has locus standi to comment on the same”, it added.Issued after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Monday, the final day of his four-day trip to China, the joint statement reaffirming the two sides’ relationship in its 75th year mentions that the Pakistani side briefed their interlocutors “on the latest developments in the situation in Jammu and Kashmir”.Beijing reiterated its long-held stance that the dispute “is left over from history and should be properly and peacefully resolved in accordance with the UN Charter, relevant UN Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreements”, it adds.New Delhi maintains that the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is a purely bilateral matter between India and Pakistan and that the Simla Agreement of 1972 supersedes UN Security Council resolutions on the issue.Pakistan and China also underlined their opposition to “any unilateral actions” and reaffirmed the importance of “maintaining peace and stability in South Asia” as well as resolving disputes by way of dialogue and diplomacy.These remarks come against the background of the Indo-Pakistani military conflict last year that followed India’s strikes against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir after the Pahalgam terror attack. Earlier this month the state media in China publicly confirmed the involvement of Chinese technicians in aiding Pakistan during the conflict.Their joint statement also says the two sides agreed to develop the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), to advance the realignment of the Thakot-Raikot section of the Karakoram Highway whose upgradation is part of the CPEC and to “make good use of the Khunjerab Pass to strengthen land connectivity” between their countries. The highway connects China’s Xinjiang and the Pakistani Punjab through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the border of which Khunjerab lies at.Noting that some CPEC projects “are in India’s sovereign territory”, the external affairs ministry said India ‘resolutely opposes and rejects’ attempts by other countries to “reinforce or legitimise Pakistan’s illegal and forcible occupation of these territories, impinging on India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. “This has been clearly conveyed to Pakistani and Chinese authorities several times,” it added.Referring to that part of the joint statement expressing readiness to carry out trans-boundary water cooperation, New Delhi said that “as the two countries do not share any boundary, the question of so-called ‘trans-boundary water resources cooperation’ does not arise”.“India has never recognised the so-called 1963 boundary agreement between Pakistan and China,” it continued, referring to the pact by which Islamabad illegally ceded the Shaksgam Valley to Beijing.