Sunday 11 August 2013



BJP PRESS RELEASE
China incursions:End ambiguity about LAC
JAMMU,August 7: BJP National Executive Member & J&K Chief Spokesperson Dr Jitendra Singh has appealed to the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) team led by its Chairman Mr Shyam Saran,currently on a visit to Ladakh and Northern borders to assess ground situation in the wake of recent incursions by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China , that no lasting solution is possible unless the Govt of India takes a determined initiative to end ambiguity about the "Line of Actual Control" (LAC). He said, the ongoing game of "hide and seek" in the Himalayas between Indian and Chinese troops is primarily  the result of ambiguity that India continues to accept over the LAC.
Dr Jitendra Singh went on to explain that the Line of Actual Control (LAC) is an assumed border between India and the People's Republic of China (PRC). He said,the LAC is 4,057-km long and traverses three areas of northern Indian states: western (Ladakh,Kashmir), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal), and added that the phrase "LAC" was coined by then then Chinese Prime Minister Zhou En lai who used it for the first time in a letter dated 24 October 1959 addressed to his Indian counterpart Jawaharlal Nehru.Unfortunately,neither Nehru nor successive Congress governments in New Delhi took a serious cognizance of it except for a solitary occasion soon after the China attack in 1962 when Nehru,under pressure from Opposition,felt constrained to state "What is this 'line of control'? Is this the line they {Chinese) have created by aggression?... "

Curiously, the road construction work by China came up soon after the Kargil war between India and Pakistan, and was clearly in violation of the agreed freeze on border work area,said Dr Jitendra Singh,but strangely,India did not protest at that time, leaving the Chinese road project to gain de facto legitimacy over the years.From there on, the plot thickened with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel patrolling the border, being somewhat at a disadvantage in the absence of similar roads on the Indian side connecting their border posts as a result of which they are constrained to use the Chinese roads to get from one post to another,he added.

 Dr Jitendra Singh alleged that the failure of the Indian side to end ambiguity about LAC has prompted  a pattern of behaviour discernible in the Chinese blow-hot-blow-cold routine. At the recent Special Representative-level talks in Beijing on the border dispute, for instance, the Chinese side conveyed an expansiveness of outlook, claiming  that China was looking to “break new ground” in addressing the border dispute but the only thing that lies broken today is the trust between the two sides, which always rested on slippery ground, he said.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that the Chinese troops have also been terrorizing the civilian population on the Indian side and referred to an incident in the month of June when , Chinese troops ventured into the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in the Chumar area of south-eastern Ladakh and made away with surveillance cameras that Indian troops had set up there. The troops are also reported to have issued grim warnings – in Hindi – to the local shepherd community and families, urging them to depart from what they claimed was Chinese territory,he added. Dr Jitendra Singh called upon the Congress led UPA government to immediately take steps to clearly delineate borders between the two countries,come out with a policy document and call the Chinese bluff once and for all.

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