India outrightly rejects China’s move to rename 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh

NEW DELHI, April 4: India has reacted sharply to China’s attempts to rename places in the Northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and said it “outrightly rejects” the move though Beijing insisted on its claims.
“The state has been and will always be an ‘integral and inalienable part of India’,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on Tuesday.
His comments came after reports said that China had renamed 11 places along a disputed Himalayan border region in Arunachal Pradesh.
The official names of the 11 places were released on Sunday by China’s ministry of civil affairs.
It also gave precise coordinates, including two land areas, two residential areas, five mountain peaks and two rivers, and listed the category of places’ names and their subordinate administrative districts, Chinese state-run Global Times reported on Monday.
Reacting to India’s criticism of China announcing the names for 11 locations in Arunachal Pradesh, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning claimed at a media briefing in Beijing that “Zangnan (the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh) is part of China’s territory”.
“In accordance with relevant stipulations of the administration of geographical names of the State Council, competent authorities of the Chinese government have standardised the names of some parts of Zangnan. This is within China’s sovereign rights,” she said.
India and China share a disputed 3,440 km long de facto border called the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, which is poorly demarcated. The presence of rivers, lakes and snow-caps means the line can shift.
But this is also not the first time that Beijing has renamed places in the state, triggering angry reactions from India.
The latest tensions began after the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs on April 1 announced that it had “standardised some geographical names in southern Tibet”.
This included mountain peaks, residential areas, rivers and a town close to the capital town of Itanagar. India said Beijing could not alter the status of places in the Northeastern state.
Beijing first sought to rename six districts in Arunachal Pradesh in 2017 in a move that was seen as “retaliation” for a visit by the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan spiritual leader had visited the region earlier that year in April.
It released a second list in December last year, this time renaming 15 places in the region. India had reacted strongly and said it rejected the changes.
China’s renaming of the places in Arunachal Pradesh came in the midst of the lingering eastern Ladakh border standoff that began in May 2020.
Following the standoff, India bolstered its overall military preparedness along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Arunachal Pradesh sector as well.
Last month, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said that the situation along the LAC in eastern Ladakh remained “very fragile” and is “quite dangerous” in military assessment because of close deployments of troops of both sides in some pockets, though “substantial” progress has been made in the disengagement process in many areas.
The Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a nearly three-year-long confrontation in certain friction points in eastern Ladakh even as the two sides completed disengagement of troops from several areas following extensive diplomatic and military talks.
(With PTI inputs)