JOIN USUnion Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said India should no longer depend on China and instead focus on research and innovation to ramp up domestic manufacturing.
The minister also said the government is working on formulating a new policy for import substitution.
The remarks come in the wake of border clashes between the two nations in Ladakh.
Addressing a webinar on India's electric vehicle roadmap post COVID-19, the minister for Road Transport and Highways and MSME said, "I feel that it is time, which I directly want to tell you because I was not using those words, we should not depend upon China now."
He said even though presently the prices of Chinese goods are attractive and Indian electric vehicle companies are earning good profits by importing parts, in the long-term, the country should produce everything locally.
"Without that, we don't have a good future. Otherwise the Chinese, somewhere they can give a reasonable concessional rate at the starting point, and when your industry will achieve good production they will charge more.
"So again there will be a problem. So self dependence on everything is the key to success for this industry," Gadkari said.
Twenty Indian Army personnel were killed in violent hand-to-hand clashes with Chinese troops in Galwan Valley on Monday -- the biggest confrontation between the two sides in about five decades.