India has rejected China’s move to rename some places in Arunachal Pradesh in its own language, asserting that the North-eastern state would always remain an integral part of this country.
Reacting to the development, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said this was not the first time China has attempted such a renaming of places in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. China had also sought to assign such names in April 2017.
”Arunachal Pradesh has always been, and will always be an integral part of India. Assigning invented names to places in Arunachal Pradesh does not alter this fact,” he added.
China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that it had standardised in Chinese characters, Tibetan and Roman alphabet the names of 15 places in Zangnan, the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh, according to state-run Global Times. This is in accordance with regulations on geographical names issued by the State Council, China’s cabinet, it said in a report.
Among the official names of the 15 places, which were given exact longitude and latitude, eight are residential places, four are mountains, two are rivers and one is a mountain pass, the report said.
This is the second batch of standardised names of places in Arunachal Pradesh given by China. The first batch of the standardised names of six places was released in 2017. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of its territory in South Tibet.
The renaming of the places in Arunachal Pradesh came amid continued tensions between India and China in the wake of the ongoing military stand-off at Eastern Ladakh.