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The Modi government has been lying about no Chinese aggression: Rahul Gandhi
NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday recharged his attacks on the BJP-led Central government, demanding PM Narendra Modi’s statement on a new controversial Chinese map that shows Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as its own territory.
India has lodged a “strong protest” with Chinese diplomats over the new “standard map” and external affairs minister dismissing the move as “absurd”.
Before heading to Karnataka with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Gandhi – who recently returned from a bike trip to Ladakh – said: “I have been saying for years that what the PM said, that not one inch of land was lost in Ladakh, is a lie. The entire Ladakh knows that China has transgressed.”
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“This map issue is very serious. They have taken away the land. The PM should say something about it,” Gandhi, holding a bag pack in his hands, told reporters outside the Delhi airport.
On Monday, China’s natural resources ministry released a new ‘standard’ map that included Aksai Chin and the state of Arunachal Pradesh as parts of its territory.
While Aksai Chin region was occupied by China following the Indo-China war in 1962 – soon after which PM Jawaharlal Nehru died, Arunachal Pradesh is recognized as South Tibet by Beijing – a claim consistently rejected by India.
The map also claimed a major chunk of South China Sea, while also laying its claims over the Republic of China, or Taiwan.
While reacting to the Chinese move, external affairs minister (MEA) Dr S Jaishankar said: “China has put out maps with territories (that are) not theirs. (It is an) old habit. Just by putting out maps with parts of India… this doesn’t change anything. Our government is very clear about our territory. Making absurd claims does not make other people’s territories yours.”
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In April, China released a list of locations, which included Chinese names for 11 places situated in Arunachal Pradesh. India had rejected the renaming, stating that the border state is an integral part of India and renaming it as and when they please will not change the fact that it is under Indian administration.
This was the third time that China had released a list of such “invented” names that made a territory theirs. The Chinese administration had released a batch of six places’ names in 2017, while another had been released in 2021 including the names of 15 locations.
The new map comes just days after PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to work for de-escalation of the situation along the entire Line of Actual Control (LAC), at the BRICS Summit held in South Africa.
