NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar slammed China on Monday for it came out with another list of new names for places in Arunachal Pradesh within days after he dismissed Beijing's claims over the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
It was last week that the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs released 30 additional names for the region as the fourth list of standardized geographical names in 'Zangnan', the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh.
China has been calling the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as South Tibet and laying its claim over this 90,000 sq km area, which India has always asserted to be an integral part of the country. Dr Jaishankar said that changing names will not alter the reality.
Addressing a press conference in Gujarat, Jaishankar said, "If today I change the name of your house, will it become mine? Arunachal Pradesh was, is and will always be a state of India. Changing names does not have an effect." He added that the Indian army is deployed at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The Chinese Ministry of Civil Aviation announced Chinese characters, Tibetan and Roman alphabet names as reported by state-run Global Times on Thursday.
The Chinese Civil Affairs Ministry released the first list of the standardized names of six places in 'Zangnan' in 2017, while the second list of 15 places was issued in 2021 followed by another list with names for 11 places in 2023.
The statements by China to reassert its claims over the state started with Beijing lodging a diplomatic protest with India over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh.
The Chinese government has issued a flurry of statements to highlight its claims. Jaishankar on March 23 dismissed China's repeated claims on Arunachal Pradesh as "ludicrous" and that the frontier state was a "natural part of India".
"This is not a new issue. I mean, China has laid claim, it has expanded its claim. The claims are ludicrous to begin with and remain ludicrous today," he said in response to a question on the Arunachal issue after delivering a lecture at the prestigious Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) of the National University of Singapore (NUS).
"So, I think we've been very clear, very consistent on this. And I think you know that is something which will be part of the boundary discussions which are taking place," he said.
China on its part has called Arunachal Pradesh as the "inherent part of China's territory".
China had lodged protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh to inaugurate the all-weather, strategic Sela Tunnel. India rejected China's claims multiple times and said Arunachal Pradesh is, was and will always remain an integral part of the country.
Reaffirming India's position on the matter, Arunachal Pradesh, has been made very clear, time and again. Recently, "we also issued a statement in this regard. China may repeat its baseless claims as many times as they want, that is not going to change our position," MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said most recently.
Also, India claims that China is illegally occupying about 38,000 sq km of India's territory in Aksai Chin, which borders eastern Ladakh. Pakistan ceded to China about 5,180 sq km in 1963 from the Indian Territory illegally occupied by it.
The armed forces of India and China have engaged in a protracted standoff since May 2020 with the diplomatic and military talks continuing to resolve the issues.
