Former Chief of Army Staff and Union Minister, General VK Singh, is no stranger to controversy. One of his colleagues in the military has bluntly noted that he suffers from the ‘foot in mouth’ disease. This time ‘round, his intention was noble.
Singh recently tried to tell the local media in Madurai that in the recent fracas on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, ‘India had lost no territory’, a theme the Modi government has assiduously cultivated by saying it foiled Chinese attempts at transgression across LAC in May 2020, whereas facts on the ground are different.
PM Modi himself, at an all-party meeting after the 2020 Galwan fiasco said: “Nobody has intruded” — which was interpreted by the Chinese as a clean chit for them and used widely in a Mandarin translation to establish its bonafides of not trespassing Indian territory during the clash between two sides at Galwan.
Singh went on to inform the media triumphantly that ‘India had crossed the LAC many more times than China’, using his military knowledge to illustrate the transgressions, this at a time when both sides are blaming each other for disturbing peace and tranquility in border areas.