Chinese troops: Manohar Parrikar says transgression, not incursion

On July 22, the Defence Minister told the House, two People’s Liberation Army soldiers had entered 200 metres inside the Indian territory in the Barholi area of Uttarakhand and the villagers had warned them. “The Line of Actual Control (LAC) has not been formally demarcated. So there is a different perception about this on both the sides,” Parrikar said.

At this, an agitated Bhartruhari Mahtab of the BJD got up to say, “Sir, it is the Chinese point of view that it is not demarcated.” Congress president Sonia Gandhi could be seen lauding Mahtab for making this point.

The Defence Minister maintained that there were mechanisms like flag meetings by the two sides to resolve such issues. During such meetings, “we have made our protests to the Chinese side”. “There was no incursion, only transgression,” Parrikar said, adding that there were about 400 to 500 incidents of transgression every year, and this year, these had come down.

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The issue was raised by Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, who said that the PLA had made “incursions” by air and by land. “In the last nine days, there have been several such instances along the border, but there is silence on the part of the government. There has been no clarification from the Prime Minister or the Home Minister,” said Scindia.

The TMC’s Saugata Roy, who had also given a notice to speak on the issue, said, “According to Home Ministry officials, the PLA troops told the Indian officials to go back as the area belonged to them. They told the Indian team that they recognise the area as ‘Wu-Je’.”

Comparing India’s relations vis-a-vis China and Pakistan, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav said China was more of a threat than Pakistan as the latter knows “it will be destroyed in five minutes”.

Bhagat Singh Koshyari, BJP MP from Nainital and former chief minister of Uttarakhand, however, said that following his visit to the region, he was satisfied that there had been no incident as claimed by opposition members.