life-in-india.info

India and China have played down reports of renewed tension between them over a long-running border dispute. But the two Asian countries have been arguing about the demarcation of their 4000km-long border for several decades. There is now renewed tension on the border issue over which the two countries fought a brief war in 1962. Parts of the frontier are still in dispute, including a portion of Kashmir and the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. The Indian military recently accused China of launching incursions and have stepped up its presence in Kashmir. However, in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Hamish Macdonald, P Chidambaram, India’s interior minister, did not rule out error. “It is a disputed border. There could be navigational errors. What we think are violations have taken place and these are resolved by talking to each other,” he said. “But please remember that the India-China border is not the same as the LoC between India and Pakistan, where infiltration takes place, violence takes place.” In the latest development, the government of Arunachal Pradesh urged New Delhi on Tuesday to act tough on Chinese claims over the state. “Chinese claims over Arunachal Pradesh are simply baseless and not correct. Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India and would continue to do so,” Dorjee Khandu, the state’s chief minister, told the Times of India newspaper. Conflicting claims Beijing gave up its territorial claim over Sikkim in 2003 but still holds on to its …