ISLAMABAD: India said on Friday that it remained ready to work with Pakistan on humanitarian issues related to prisoners and fishermen in each other’s jails.

“India remains committed to addressing, on priority with Pakistan, humanitarian matters, including those pertaining to prisoners and fishermen in each other’s country,” Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement issued on the bi-annual exchange of list of prisoners.

The lists are exchanged twice a year, January 1 and July 1, under a bilateral 2008 agreement through which both countries inform each other about their nationals they are holding in their jails. These include both fishermen, held by the two sides for inadvertent trespassing of the maritime boundary, and civilians accused of crimes of different nature.

Both Pakistan and India agree that the issue of detained fishermen and prisoners is a humanitarian matter that needs to be expeditiously addressed, but still it gets linked to the tensions in a crisis-ridden relationship.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi had at their meeting in Ufa in July last year agreed on the release of fishermen in each other’s custody, along with their boats, within a period of 15 days. But that could not happen as the two countries differed on the interpretation of other political elements of the Ufa joint statement. This year’s Pathnakot incident, which has held up start of the agreed Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, has prevented any progress on fishermen and prisoners issue also.

Pakistan, in line with the understanding reached at the Ufa meeting, proposed a mechanism to India in March this year for the release of fishermen within 15 days of their detention, but Delhi did not respond to that.

The Indian ministry’s statement instead blamed Pakistan for not taking interest in completing the nationality confirmation process of its nationals in Indian jails.

“We await confirmation of nationality of those from Pakistan who are otherwise eligible for release and repatriation and consular access to those Indian nationals in Pakistan’s custody for whom it has so far not been provided,” it said.

Earlier, a joint judicial commission existed since 2007 for addressing the issues of fishermen and other prisoners, but that too has been inactive since October 2013, when the Pakistani side of the commission visited Indian jails.

PRISONERS STATS: As per the latest exchange, there were 518 Indian prisoners lodged in Pakistani jails including 55 civil inmates and 463 fishermen. This figure did not include Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Indian spy whose capture was announced in March this year and has since been flaunted by Pakistani authorities at all levels.

Meanwhile, reports in Indian media said the Pakistani High Commission in Delhi was given a list of 505 Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. This included 133 fishermen and 372 civilian prisoners.

The exchange of lists has become a ritual, but importantly these figures are not correct most of the times, although officially the two sides are expected to share with each other comprehensive lists.

After the last exchange on Jan 1, a controversy erupted over the number of Pakistani prisoners in India. There were allegations that some 189 of them were unaccounted for.

Similarly, the Indian High Commission in Islamabad believes that there are about 575 fishermen and 52 other prisoners of Indian nationality currently in the custody of Pakistani authorities, according to the mission’s website.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2016