No Chinese intrusion in Arunachal: Patil

GUWAHATI: India on Wednesday denied reports of any Chinese military incursion into the frontier northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

"The reports (of intrusion) are not true," Home Minister Shivraj Patil told journalists in Assam's main city Guwahati. 

The minister was reacting to recent reports quoting a lawmaker from Arunachal Pradesh who claimed that the Chinese army had moved 20 km inside the state that borders China's Tibet region.

"There has been a Chinese incursion in our country particularly in Arunachal Pradesh. I have written to the government of India and raised the issue in parliament. The government is not accepting the incursion openly. But defence personnel acknowledge that this is happening and the Chinese are occupying our land," Khiren Rijiju, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, had said this week.

The local are taking the allegations very seriously in Arunachal, particularly after China's ambassador to India Sun Yuxi said in November: "The whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory... We are claiming the whole of that."

India then strongly reacted to the Chinese claims with the external affairs ministry saying: "Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India".

Beijing in 2003 gave up its territorial claim over the Indian state of Sikkim but still holds on to its age-old stand that a vast stretch of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to it.

The mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,030 km unfenced border with China.

The India-China border along Arunachal Pradesh is separated by the McMohan Line, an imaginary border now known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

India and China fought a border war in 1962, with Chinese troops advancing deep into Arunachal Pradesh and inflicting heavy casualties on Indian troops.

The border dispute with China was inherited by India from British colonial rulers, who hosted a 1914 conference with the Tibetan and Chinese governments that set the border in what is now Arunachal Pradesh. 

China has never recognised the 1914 McMahon Line and claims 90,000 sq km, nearly all of Arunachal Pradesh. India also accuses China of occupying 8,000 sq km in Kashmir. 

After 1962, tensions flared again in 1986 with Indian and Chinese forces clashing in Sumdorong Chu valley of Arunachal. Chinese troops reportedly built a helipad in the valley leading to fresh skirmishes along the borders.