Thaindian News

Jammu, Jan 14 (IANS) The boundary row with China should be resolved at the earliest so that development work doesn’t suffer, a Jammu and Kashmir minister urged the central government Friday, confirming that Chinese troops had stopped work on a bus station near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) last year.”I think the ministry of external affairs and the defence ministry should resolve the boundary issue with China so that the development work can be undertaken in the border areas,” Rural Development Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar told a local news channel.

Sagar admitted that his ministry had stopped work in Gombir village of Demchok area in Ladakh last October after Chinese troops entered and asked the contractor to stop work on a passenger shed being constructed there.

“We stopped the work because we didn’t want any controversy, but the fact remains that the work was stopped. We want the centre to settle this boundary issue so that development work can be undertaken in the border areas,” the minister said.

While the Indian Army had played down the incursion reports on the LAC, the de facto border between Indian and China, the external affairs ministry has termed them as “baseless”.

Army chief General V.K. Singh had said: “I only see it as a problem of perception. We patrol up to our perception of the LAC which is further east and the Chinese come to the LAC as perceived by them,” he said.

“When they do that and it is beyond our line, it is called transgression. I am quite sure on the Chinese side also they would call it a transgression when our patrols go up to our line of perception.”

The external affairs ministry, in a statement added: “These reports are baseless and do not conform to facts. They are, therefore, not a cause for concern.”