China grabbed land, says Rahul; BJP in denial mode

NT Correspondent

Ladakh: Raising the SinoIndia border issue here, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said everyone in Ladakh knows that China has "taken away our land" and claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assertion that not an inch of land was occupied was "absolutely false".

Gandhi addressed a public meeting here on the last day of his nineday tour of Ladakh.

He said, "I visited the whole of Ladakh on my motorcycle over the past week.... Ladakh is a strategic place and when I was at Pangong lake, one thing was clear that China had taken over thousands of kilometers of Indian land. Unfortunately, the prime minister... made a statement that not an inch of our land was taken away which is absolutely false."

"Every individual of Ladakh knows that China has taken away our land and the prime minister is not speaking the truth," he alleged.

The former Congress president's remarks came after PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a conversation on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra on Thursday said Modi conveyed to Xi India's concerns on the "unresolved" issues along the Line of Actual Control.

BJP calls Gandhi remark absurd

New Delhi:The BJP on Friday rejected Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's charge that China has encroached on Indian territory as baseless and absurd, and asserted that it is the opposition party that has committed "historic, unpardonable crimes" in dealings with Beijing.