Disregarding China’s repeated territorial claims in Arunachal Pradesh, Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Thursday said the people were not taking Beijing “seriously” and the state remained unfazed.
Khandu said Beijing’s claims were not new, while noting that China’s repeated attempts to rename areas in Arunachal Pradesh were out of “usual”.
“This is nothing new for us, and we don’t care about these kinds of allegations. We don’t take it seriously.” that I Khandu was quoted as saying by the news agency during a visit to Shillong. He further said that Arunachal Pradesh does not share a border with China but with Tibet, which shows the basic geographical distinction.
“It is very safe, and we do not share a border with China; we share a border with Tibet, and Arunachal Pradesh only shares a border with Tibet,” Khandu said, according to ANI.
Read also | The renaming of places in Arunachal is part of China’s cultural expansion
Khandu rejects comparison to 1962, highlights PM’s ‘huge push’ towards IR
Khandu said that the comparison between the border situation in 1962 and the current time is “misleading.” “…Comparing the infrastructure of 1962 – or that era – with today is very misleading. This is the year 2026 – the era of ‘New India’ and ‘Advanced India’ (Vixit Bharat),” Khandu added.
He further said that there have been “significant advances” in India’s border areas “starting from the mainland Kashmir region all the way to Arunachal Pradesh”. Khandu highlighted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “huge push for infrastructure development”, saying it had made the border areas “much more accessible”, PTI reported.
Since the Doklam crisis in 2017, China has renamed as many as 82 cities and geographical areas in Arunachal Pradesh, with the last set of names released on April 10, 2026. The Ministry of External Affairs has repeatedly rejected such attempts, asserting that they do not change the reality on the ground. The Foreign Ministry described China’s attempts as “absurd,” “preposterous” and “mischievous.”
The Ministry has categorically stated that Arunachal Pradesh “has been, is and always will be” an integral and inalienable part of India. The Middle East Airlines had said earlier this year that such moves could affect the normalization of relations between New Delhi and Beijing.
This came after reports that Beijing had created a third new province in the Aksai Chin region and allocated names to 23 locations in Arunachal Pradesh. “India categorically rejects any malicious attempts by the Chinese side to assign fictitious names to places forming part of the territory of India… These actions by the Chinese side detract from the ongoing efforts to stabilize and normalize bilateral relations between India and China,” the Ministry of External Affairs stated.
