Home minister Amit Shah sent a stern message to China declaring that India would not permit even an inch of its territory to be invaded. Beijing responded angrily, accusing him of violating its sovereignty and endangering peace and tranquilly in border regions.
“Due to the bravery of soldiers of our army and ITBP, no one can challenge the borders of our country. The time is gone when anyone could encroach upon the land of India. Today, no one can encroach even on a single inch of our land,” said Shah while launching the ‘Vibrant Villages Programme’ at Kibithoo, India’s first village near the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh’s Anjaw district. “Our policy is clear. We want to live in peace with all but will not allow even an inch of our land to be encroached upon,” he said.
"Zangnan is part of China's territory," a representative for the Chinese foreign ministry declared at a press conference in Beijing. The senior Indian official's actions in Zangnan are a violation of Chinese territorial sovereignty and do not promote calm and tranquilly in the border regions. We vehemently oppose this. Arunachal Pradesh is known as Zangnan in Chinese.
A diplomatic dispute over India's hosting of the G-20 summit in Itanagar, the state's capital, and Beijing's subsequent renaming of certain towns to support its claim to the state it sees as a part of south Tibet led to Home Minister Amit Shah's visit to the region. These newly named places, which MEA described as ‘invented names’, turned out to be forest land, non-existent rivers and nondescript mountain tops.