The Congress on Wednesday referred to a BJP parliamentarian’s claim on Chinese incursions in Arunachal Pradesh and asked the Narendra Modi government why it was downplaying the trend of the neighbouring country grabbing India’s land in different sectors.

In an interview to an Assamese news channel, Tapir Gao, who represents Arunachal East in the Lok Sabha, has detailed the extent of encroachment by the Chinese in the northeastern state, parts of whose territory the Chinese claim as theirs.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari recalled that Gao had earlier raised the issue in the Lok Sabha in November 2019, warning the government of a standoff in Arunachal Pradesh similar to the one in Doklam in 2017. Indian and Chinese troops had been eyeball-to-eyeball for over two months at the Doklam plateau at the India-China-Bhutan trijunction.

Tewari asked the government to clarify whether the BJP MP was right.

“Tapir Gao has claimed that the (Chinese) People’s Liberation Army has occupied territory on both sides of the Subansiri river in the Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh on the Indian side of the McMahon Line. The Chinese army has also taken an army base called Majha, forcing the Indian Army to set up another base deep inside Indian territory called New Majha. The Prime Minister said at the all-party meeting that no Indian post had been taken over,” Tewari said.

At the meeting on Friday to brief the Opposition on the clash in Ladakh that left 20 Indian soldiers dead, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said: “Neither has anyone intruded into our frontier there, neither is any intruder there, nor is any of our posts occupied by someone else.”

Tewari recounted that Tao had lamented in the Lok Sabha that Parliament, the Indian media and the government do not take encroachments by the Chinese seriously. The MP had said future generations would not forgive him if he didn’t bring these facts on record in Parliament.

Tewari said on Wednesday that it was unfortunate that the Modi government had tried to obfuscate facts on the ground and initially downplay reports of encroachments in Ladakh till videos of scuffles between Indian and Chinese soldiers surfaced.

Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi, who was also present at the media conference, said: “The government should not take these as isolated incidents, rather it should see this as a trend and a grand design by the Chinese that needs to be rebuffed strongly.”