China row: BJP says UPA inactive, Left warns against ‘provocation’

Express News Service

NEW DELHI, MAY 18: With China making fresh claims on Indian soil at the northernmost tip of Sikkim, the BJP on Sunday hit out strongly at the Congress-led UPA government for “not doing enough” to check the “expansionist designs” of China.

While the Indian Government struck a more reconciliatory note despite China’s stridency on the issue, the ruling Congress sought to distance itself as it said there was no “question of any territorial claims” since that had been resolved decades ago.

The Left, on its part, said both countries should not take “provocative steps” while the talks on border dispute are still underway.

The BJP — a day after The Sunday Express reported on the Chinese fresh claims and troop entry into the “finger area” which is the northernmost tip of Sikkim — slammed the Left-backed, Congress-led UPA Government. “First it was Arunachal Pradesh, and now it’s Sikkim. We would like the Union Government to tell us what it is doing to check the increasing and frequent Chinese incursions on the Indian side,” said BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Former External Affairs Minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, too, reacted strongly to the incursion. “The UPA Government has been supine in the face of the growing Chinese threat. The Government has allowed domestic politics, with the disproportionate influence of CPM, to influence its foreign policy.”