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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