NEW DELHI: India said on Wednesday (May 14) that it rejects China’s move to rename places in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh where the Asian neighbours share a border, adding that the Himalayan territory was an integral part of India.
Beijing has renamed places in Arunachal Pradesh in the past as well and the issue has been an irritant in ties between the two countries, especially as they deteriorated sharply after a deadly military clash elsewhere on their border in 2020.
They reached an agreement in October to step back from their four-year military stand-off in the western Himalayas, leading to disengagement of troops.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a media briefing that Beijing had “standardised some place names in (Arunachal Pradesh), which is entirely within China’s sovereignty”, repeating what has been Beijing’s standard response.
Beijing says Arunachal Pradesh, which its calls Zangnan, is a part of South Tibet, a claim New Delhi has repeatedly dismissed.
“Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Wednesday.
Read the full article here
