MOSCOW, March 19 — The Indian Foreign Ministry has rejected China’s ‘absurd’ claims to a contested border region in the Himalayas, as the old diplomatic row escalated in early March after the visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reported Sputnik.
On March 9, Modi travelled to the sparsely populated mountainous territory called Arunachal Pradesh by India and South Tibet or Zangnan by China in order to inaugurate infrastructure projects.
An exchange of diplomatic notes followed, and yesterday, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said China considers the contested region an unalienable part of its territory.
“We have noted the comments made by the spokesperson of the Chinese Defence Ministry advancing absurd claims over the territory of the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh. Repeating baseless arguments in this regard does not lend such claims any validity.
“Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India. Its people will continue to benefit from our development programmes and infrastructure projects,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement today.
India and China have been embroiled in several disputes over the land stretching along their 3,540 km border, most notably over the Himalayan territory of Ladakh, which is also claimed in part by Pakistan.
India and China fought a war over the region in 1962, followed by a deadly flare-up in 2020.
In 2021, the two countries negotiated a gradual and bilateral pullback of troops from the unofficial border known as the Line of Actual Control. As negotiations continue, 50,000–60,000 troops are still deployed on both sides of the India-China border in the Himalayas.
— Bernama
