India rejects China’s latest renaming of places in Arunachal border state

NEW DELHI: India said on Wednesday 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.

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“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.

In April last year, China made a similar move by renaming about 30 locations in Arunachal Pradesh, which India dismissed as “senseless” and reaffirmed the region’s status as an “integral part” of the country.

India and China share a poorly demarcated 3,800-km (2,360-mile) frontier and fought a brief but brutal war in 1962. There have also been infrequent clashes between their troops, with 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers killed in the 2020 fighting.

The India-China exchange comes days after India and Pakistan ended four days of intense military fighting, during which they used jets, missiles and drones.

The Indian strike came in response to an April 22 attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) which killed 26 men.

Pakistan said it had nothing to do with the attack on the tourists, adding that India’s strike was aimed at civilian targets.