After former Army chief and Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Gen VK Singh on Sunday, 7 February said that India had transgressed along the Line of Actual Control more than China, China’s Foreign Ministry termed Singh’s comment as an “unwitting confession”, The Hindu reported.
While speaking to reporters in Madurai, the Union Minister Gen Singh said the border had never been demarcated. So, while China had transgressed across the LAC according to its perception, India had done the same but the government did not announce it.
“Chinese media does not cover it,” Singh said, adding, “Let me assure you, if China has transgressed 10 times, we must have done it at least 50 times,” The Hindu quoted.
On Monday, Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry said, “This is an unwitting confession by the Indian side.”
Speaking in regards to Gen Singh’s statement, Wenbin highlighted, ‘frequent acts of trespass’ undertaken by India, which ‘constantly created disputes and frictions’, calling them ‘the root cause of the tension at the China-India border’.
He also urged the ‘Indian side to follow through on the consensus, agreements and treaties it reached with China, and uphold peace and stability in the border region with concrete actions,” The Hindu reported.
The Union Minster had expressed similar concerns on Sunday, by saying that ‘over a period of time, China has been attempting to expand its area by taking advantage of its perception of the LAC’, as he went on to praise the current government for ensuring this does not happen again.
“Today, China is under pressure, since we are sitting at places (along the border), where it does not like,” he said, The Hindu reported.
After the war in 1962, India and China have been engaged in an ongoing soft border dispute. Recently, In June last year, deadly clashes broke out between Indian and Chinese forces in Galwan Valley of Ladakh region, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. Even amid 50,000 troops deployed on each side and several rounds of military and diplomatic talks, the standoff between the two countries has not yet found a resolution.
(With inputs from The Hindu)
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