Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Bipin Rawat has reacted to the report of China building a village in India’s Arunachal Pradesh. CDS Rawat said on Thursday that the controversy about the Chinese coming into the Indian territory and building a new village is “not true”.
General Rawat said that the villages were well within the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). He also asserted that China has not transgressed the Indian “perception” of the LAC, reported PTI.
In its recent report, the US Department of Defence said China built a large village inside disputed territory between its Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern sector of the LAC.
Earlier in an official reaction to the US report, the external affairs ministry said India has neither accepted China’s “illegal occupation of its territory nor any unjustified Chinese claims”.
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In a weekly media briefing on Thursday, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, “China has undertaken construction activities in the past several years along the border areas including in the areas that it has illegally occupied over the decades. India has neither accepted such illegal occupation of our territory nor has it accepted the unjustified Chinese claims.”
However, Rawat, at ‘Times Now Summit 2021’, said, “as far as we are concerned, no such village development has taken place on our side of the LAC.”
“The present controversy – that has erupted – that the Chinese have come across into our territory and built a new village is not true,” he said, as quoted by PTI.
