Arunachal CM reminds China yet again that it only shares border with Tibet, not China

DHARAMSALA, Nov 18: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister has yet again reiterated that his state shares boundary with Tibet, not China.

“It is a fact that Arunachal does not share a direct border with China. The direct border is with Tibet. Nobody can erase history,” PTI quoted Chief Minister Pema Khandu as saying in an interview on The New Times of India.

“We share a border of over 1,100 km with Tibet,” he stated in the report and added that  “It’s a different thing that China occupied Tibet. The world knows it.”

The Arunachal Chief Minister made the same remarks earlier in 2007 after China strongly objection to the Tibetan spiritual leader’s visit to his state and again in June earlier this year, he made similar remarks calling the LAC as the “Indo-Tibet border” in a tweet accompanied by pictures of an army event in the state that he attended.

The McMahon Line demarcation is the current effective boundary between China and India after the Chinese occupation of Tibet.  It is a demarcation line drawn on the map referred to in the Shimla Accord, a treaty signed between Britain and Tibet in 1914.

The Chief Minister invited the Tibetan spiritual leader to his state, the second-largest Buddhist populated state in India, in 2017 and escorted the Dalai Lama from Guwahati to Bomdila during the latter’s 9 – day visit to the state.

Meanwhile, China has laid claim to around 90,000 square kilometres of Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory, which India has resolutely rejected.