The government must deal firmly with China and make it clear that “we will not tolerate them sitting on our soil”, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said here on Sunday on the eve of the climax of his Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Gandhi said it was extremely dangerous for the government to “completely deny” that the Chinese had “occupied our land” because it would give them the confidence to do “more aggressive things”.
Speaking at a press conference hours after Lal Chowk unfurled the tricolor flag, the former Congress president, who presided over the 134-day Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Srinagar, said: The way to deal with them is to be firm and very clear that they are sitting on our soil and that is something we will not tolerate.”
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“Indian Prime Minister is the only one in the country who thinks that the Chinese have not taken any land from India. I recently met with some veterans and even a delegation from Ladakh and made it clear that 2000 square kilometers of our Indian territory has been taken by China People took over,” Gandhi said.
They also say that many patrol points that were previously in Indian territory are now firmly in Chinese hands.
His remarks came a day after Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said that some people are deliberately spreading misinformation about China, knowing that it is not true, for the sake of politics, by talking about some lands that were occupied by China in 1962, they give people The impression is that this was recent – the comments were taken as a dig at Gandhi.
“Sometimes, they talk about some lands, which were occupied by China in 1962. But they don’t tell you the truth. They give you the impression that this happened yesterday,” he said, without naming him .
Rahul Gandhi has been raising the issue of Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control, claiming that Indian territory is already occupied.