China: FM counters Congress, Claims Nehru Abandoned North East

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday hit back at the Congress questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “silence” on Chinese actions on the border, saying the country’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru had washed his hands off north-east.

She said that in 1962, the entire north-east was “left to meet their own fate” and Nehru had washed his hands off the region.

A massive row has been going on over India’s border conflict with China with the opposition parties cornering the Centre of keeping mum on China’s incursion into the Indian territory and its unilateral decisions to change the status quo along the border areas.

“We have stopped Chinese from coming into Arunachal Pradesh. Our action speaks for it. So they (Congress) can go on saying ‘Oh, Prime Minister doesn’t speak. I want him (Rahul Gandhi) to please check up on what their first Prime Minister, our first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had said. He washed his hands off (north-east)”, Sitharaman said.

This week, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs renamed 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh, which it referred to as “Zangnan, the southern part of Tibet”. The country also listed the category of places’ names and their subordinate administrative districts.

While rejecting the Chinese’s move, India on Tuesday said Arunachal Pradesh has been an integral and inalienable part of the country. India also asserted that the attempts to “assign invented names will not alter this reality”.

Source: PTI