In a controversial statement, Union Minister VK Singh on Sunday confessed that India has "trangressed" more times than China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) but there would be no official reports on it.
Singh, the Union Minister of State (MoS) for State Transport and Highways, was speaking to the media yesterday at Tamil Nadu's Madurai, where he said that the actual India-China border has never been officially demarcated.
It is pertinent to mention that VK Singh had in the past served as the 23rd Chief of the Army Staff from 2010 to 2012, and was also a former four-star General in the Indian Army. Therefore, being a natural authority on the subject, the legitimacy in his claims is granted.
Due to there not being an officially demarcated border, both countries have unwittingly transgressed their own perceptions of the LAC and none of it would be evident in records.
"Chinese media does not cover it,” The Hindu quoted Gen. (retd) Singh as having said, mentioning that even China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) transgressed their own perception of the line.
"...if China has transgressed 10 times, we must have done it at least 50 times,” he added.
The report goes on to further elaborate on the former Army chief's views on the border transgressions, where he goes to say that China had transgressed in Eastern Ladakh in 2020, but India took immediate measures to ensure that warnings are sent in equal measure.
Nearly 50,000 troops of the Indian Army are deployed in a high state of combat readiness in various mountainous locations in eastern Ladakh in sub-zero temperatures as multiple rounds of talks between the two sides have not yielded concrete outcome to resolve the standoff. China has also deployed an equal number of troops, according to officials.
Meanwhile, the evolving situation in the Indo-Pacific region in the wake of China's increasing military muscle flexing has become a major talking point among leading global powers.
The US has been favouring making Quad a security architecture to check China's growing assertiveness.
China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years.
Beijing claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea. But Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counterclaims. In the East China Sea, China has territorial disputes with Japan.
The South China Sea and the East China Sea are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources.
(With inputs from agencies)
