China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs has renamed atleast 15 places in Northeast’s Arunachal Pradesh.
The new names were released on Thursday along with the coordinates and a map.
The announcements were made just a few days ahead of the new border law.
It is worth nothing that Arunachal Pradesh is termed as Zangnan or South Tibet in Chinese maps.
Reacting to the development, India asserted that the state has “always been” and will “always be” an integral part of India and that assigning “invented” names does not alter this fact.
“We have seen such. This is not the first time China has attempted such a renaming of places in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. China had also sought to assign such names in April 2017,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.