New Delhi : On China's claim regarding Arunachal Pradesh and EAM Dr S Jaishankar's response to it, Congress MP Manish Tewari slammed the centre and called the response "weak."
"EAM S Jaishankar gave a wonderful statement yesterday. He said that if today I change the name of your house, will it become mine?... Such a weak response does not suit the Government of India and the External Affairs Minister of the country," said Tewari.
Lashing out further, he said that those who have been espousing muscularity about Katchatheevu, it is unfortunate and regrettable that they are scared of even uttering the word China.
Recently, China released a list of 30 places in Arunachal Pradesh in a bid to assert its claim over India's northeastern state. India has been rejecting such renaming of places by China.
According to a March 30 report in its state-run Global Times, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs released a fourth list of standardized geographical names in Zangnan, the name that China uses for Arunachal Pradesh.
According to the official website of the ministry, 30 additional publicly used place names in the Zangnan region have been officially revealed, the Global Times report said.
The Chinese Civil Affairs Ministry released the first list of the so-called standardised names of six places in Zangnan in 2017, while the second list of 15 places was issued in 2021 followed by another list with names for 11 places in 2023.
Reacting to Beijing's action, the Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday firmly rejected China's attempt to rename several places in Arunachal Pradesh saying assigning invented names will "not alter the reality that the state will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.