'Don't Fight Wars With Neighbours, Open Doors Of Heart': Maryam Nawaz On India-Pakistan Ties

Pakistan's Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Friday advocated for Indo-Pak relationship and asked to open doors of friendship with neighbours.

"Don’t fight wars with neighbours… open the doors of friendship… open the doors of your hearts," said Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif.

While speaking at Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara with a gathering of some 3,000 Indian Sikh pilgrims, she highlighted her heritage roots with Amritsar, city present on the Indian side of Punjab.

She even recalled her grandfather's migration from Amritsar's Jatti Umra.

"Once someone came from India, from Jatti Umra. He brought soil from there, so I put it on my grandfather’s grave," Maryam Nawaz Sharif said, praising the appointment of the first Sikh minister in Pakistan, Indian Express reported.

The Kartarpur Corridor is a visa-free religious cross-border corridor, connecting Pakistan's Gurdwara Darbar Sahib near Lahore to India's Gurudwara Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district.

First proposed in 1999 by the then prime ministers of the two countries, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, the foundation stone of the corridor was laid in 2018 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and built a year later on the 550th anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak on November 12.

The 4.1 km corridor has significantly reduced the travel time for Indian pilgrims, who earlier had to undertake a 125 km journey first to Lahore and then to Kartarpur.