India on Thursday slammed China after the latter renamed 15 places of Arunachal Pradesh in its map. Reacting strongly to China’s renaming move, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Arunachal Pradesh will always be an integral part of India and “assigning invented names in the state to places does not alter this fact”.
“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,” the MEA said in response to a reaction to the Chinese government’s renaming move, news agency ANI reported.
This comes after China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a statement stating that they have ‘standardised’ names for 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, to be used on Chinese maps. This is the second time China has renamed the names of the places of Arunachal Pradesh. Way back in 2017, China had changed names of six places. Renaming of names comes just two days ahead of implementing new border law.
On October 23, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, passed a new law citing “protection and exploitation of the country’s land border areas”. The committee had stated that the new law will come into effect from January 1.
The law is not meant specifically for the border with India. China shares its 22,457 km land boundary with 14 countries including India, the third longest after the borders with Mongolia and Russia.