China tries to lay blame on India using VK Singh's remark over Indian Army crossing 'boundary' more than PLA

China claimed that the remark by V K Singh in the PM Narendra Modi’s govt in New Delhi was 'an unwitting confession' by India

Beijing on Monday made an attempt to lay the blame on New Delhi for tension in China-India border areas, taking advantage of Union Minister V K Singh’s remark that the Indian Army transgressed the de facto boundary between the two nations more often than the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the communist country.

China claimed that the remark by the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi was “an unwitting confession” by India.

Read: India cautious about US proposal for meeting of Quad leaders

“This is an unwitting confession by the Indian side,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Government, told journalists in Beijing. “For a long time,” he added, “the Indian side has conducted frequent acts of trespass in the border area in an attempt to encroach on China's territory and constantly created disputes and frictions, which is the root cause of the tensions at the China-India border”.

Singh, a former Chief of Indian Army, told media-persons at Madurai in Tamil Nadu on Sunday that India had transgressed its de facto boundary with China more times than the communist country had done so. He said that if the Chinese had transgressed into India 10 times, the Indian Army might have done so 50 times. He said that transgressions by the Indian Army into China were neither revealed by the state-controlled media in the communist country, nor made public by the Government of India.

He made the comment even as the soldiers of the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) remained engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the de facto boundary between the two nations in the western sector.

The McMahon Line marks the de facto boundary between India and China in the eastern sector.

Also Read | Vaccine diplomacy: India seeks to rival China with broad shipments of shots

“We urge the Indian side to follow through on the consensus, agreements and treaties it reached with China, and uphold peace and stability in the border region with concrete actions,” said the spokesperson of the Chinese Government.

The stand-off started after the Chinese PLA deployed a large number of troops along the LAC in eastern Ladakh and made a unilateral move to change the status quo. The Indian Army too responded with counter deployment. The stand-off remained unresolved despite several rounds of talks between the diplomats and the senior military commanders of the two sides.