RAHUL Gandhi, the former president of the Indian National Congress, India’s main opposition party, on Friday (12) slammed the Narendra Modi government saying the latter has no strategy to deal with China which is leaving the country’s national security “unpardonably compromised”.
Gandhi cited a news report in which India’s ministry of external affairs (MEA) and chief of defence staff had a different take on India’s border issue with China. Chief of defence staff Bipin Rawat on Thursday (11) said the controversy around China entering the Indian territory and setting up a new village is “not true.
The defence department of the United States, however, said in a recent report that China built a large village in the disputed territory between its Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern sector of the Line of Actual Control between India and China. In an official reaction to the American report, MEA said New Delhi has neither accepted China’s “illegal occupation of its territory nor any unjustified Chinese claims”.
Taking to Twitter, Gandhi, 51, took a dig at prime minister Modi saying in Hindi, “Our national security is unpardonably compromised because GOI has no strategy and Mr 56” is scared. My thoughts are with the soldiers risking their lives to guard our borders while the central government is lying on lies.”
Modi had said in the run up to India’s general elections in 2014 that it takes a 56-inch chest to convert the northern state of Uttar Pradesh into his home state of Gujarat in terms of development.
India’s former finance minister P Chidambaram also criticised the Modi government saying it is time that Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh drew a line in his ministry and asked the chief of defence staff to remain “well within his side of the LAC”.
“MEA said that China is in ‘illegal occupation’ of Indian territory and India will not accept ‘unjustified Chinese claims’. Within hours, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) said that the Chinese ‘have not transgressed anywhere on our perception of the LAC’ and they are ‘well within their side of the LAC’,” the veteran Congress leader said in a series of tweets.
“It is time for the Defence Minister to draw a LAC in the Defence Ministry and ask the CDS to remain well within his side of the LAC,” Chidambaram said.
Last month, India and China failed to make any progress in resolving the 18-month standoff in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh during the 13th round of military talks between them.
Each side currently has around 50,000 to 60,000 troops along the LAC in the sensitive sector of eastern Ladakh.
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