Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu has said residents of the frontier region are worried over China’s repeated claims that the northeast Indian state is its territory. “It is my request to the Indian Government and the Prime Minister to make it clear to China that they should not make any territorial claims over Arunachal Pradesh.

“Our people still have doubts and apprehensions in their mind and hence it is pertinent for New Delhi to dispel all doubts,” the chief minister said. The Chief Minister was speaking at the inaugural function of Buddha Mahotsava - an annual tourism festival - at Tawang, a picturesque town perched at an altitude of about 9,000 ft in Arunachal Pradesh, bordering China’s Tibet region. The chief minister was reacting to a statement made by Zhou Gang, a former Chinese ambassador to New Delhi and now a special consultant to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, saying Tawang should be returned to China immediately.

Zhou was quoted as saying by the media in Beijing last month: “I made it clear on many occasions to the Indian public - Tawang belongs to China. It is the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama and the Dalai Lama is ‘China’s Dalai Lama’, who cannot be ‘India’s Dalai Lama’.”

India’s Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh, who was also at Tawang to attend the tourism festival, responded to Khandu’s concern by saying Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of the country. “There should not be any fear and suspicion. Arunachal Pradesh is very much an integral part of India and the people here are Indians,” Ramesh said. Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi sparked a row last year by saying: “The whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. We are claiming the whole of that.” Beijing had in 2003 given up its territorial claim over the Indian state of Sikkim but is still holding on to its age old stand that a vast stretch of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China.

The mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh shares a 1,030 km unfenced border with China. The McMohan Line - an imaginary border that is now known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) - marks the Sino-India border along Arunachal Pradesh. India and China fought a bitter border war in 1962, with Chinese troops advancing deep into Arunachal Pradesh and inflicting heavy casualties.

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 McMahon Line and claims 90,000 sq km of land - nearly all of Arunachal Pradesh.

After the 1962 Sino-Indian War, tension flared up once again in 1986 with Indian and Chinese forces clashing in the Sumdorong Chu valley of Arunachal Pradesh.

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