New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today said that due to prior commitments, she will not attend the opening ceremony of Kartarpur Sahib Corridor as she is busy in election campaign in Telangana. She responded the invitation of Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi .

Swaraj in her official letter thanked Qureshi for the invitation and said, “Being mindful of the sentiments of our Sikh citizens and the importance of facilitating their smooth and easy access to holy Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib, we will be sending Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri as Government of India's representatives for the event.”

Worth mention here long-pending demand of the Sikh community to construct a religious corridor linking India's border district of Gurdaspur with a famous gurudwara in Pakistan may at last be fulfilled with both the nations announcing that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.

Punjab CM Amarinder Singh has invited Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi who is the speaker of the Assembly in Pakistan's Punjab province, to be present at a similar ceremony on the Indian side on November 26.

The India-Pakistan relationship nose-dived in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place. The ties between the two rival countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016.

India cancelled a meeting between Swaraj and Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, asserting the "brutal" killing of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir and the release of the postal stamps "glorifying" Kashmiri activist Burhan Wani.