STATE TIMES NEWS
New Delhi: India on Tuesday lodged a strong protest with China over its so called “standard map” laying claim over Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin, and asserted that such steps only complicate the resolution of the boundary question.
The External Affairs Ministry also rejected these claims as having “no basis”.
“Just making absurd claims does not make other people’s territories yours,” External Affairs Minister Jaishankar told NDTV while reacting to the Chinese move.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said,”We have today lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so called 2023 ‘standard map’ of China that lays claim to India’s territory.”
“We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” he added.
India’s strong reaction came a day after China officially released the 2023 edition of its “standard map” that claimed Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as belonging to that country. The “map” also showed the entire South China Sea as part of China as it featured in the previous editions of the ‘map’.
In early April also, Beijing announced Chinese names for 11 more places in Arunachal Pradesh which the neighbouring country claims as the southern part of Tibet, drawing a sharp reaction from New Delhi, which outrightly rejected Chinese renaming and asserted that the state is an integral part of India and that assigning “invented” names does not alter this reality.
It was the third batch of standardised geographical names for Arunachal Pradesh issued by China’s civil affairs ministry.
The first batch of the standardised names of six places in Arunachal Pradesh was released in 2017 while the second batch of 15 places was issued in 2021.
The ties between India and China came under severe strain following the eastern Ladakh border row that began in May 2020.
The Indian and Chinese troops are locked in an over three-year confrontation in certain friction points in eastern Ladakh even as the two sides completed disengagement from several areas following extensive diplomatic and military talks.
India has been consistently maintaining that peace and tranquillity along the LAC were key for the normalisation of overall ties.