Congressman Rahul Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Modi over comments from Ladakh (File)
New Delhi:
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi today stepped up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the violent confrontation between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan valley in eastern Ladakh last week, pointing to satellite images of the disputed region to claim that China “captured Indian territory near Lake Pangong”.
Gandhi said the photos “clearly” contradict the Prime Minister who, at Friday’s multi-stakeholder meeting on Indo-Chinese tension, said “no one is on our territory and none of our posts have been captured “.
“The Prime Minister said – no one has entered the country nor has anyone captured our territory. But the satellite images clearly show that China has captured Indian territory near Pangong Lake,” said congressman in a tweet posted Sunday evening.
Lake Pangong, also in eastern Ladakh, was the scene of skirmishes between Indian and Chinese troops on May 5 and 6, after which tensions between the two sides quickly escalated. High-level military talks appeared to defuse the situation before the violence late on the night of June 15 resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers for their country.
On Friday, three days after the clash, Prime Minister Modi said during a virtual meeting of several opposition parties that “no one is on our territory nor has any of our posts been captured”.
The comment met with a quick response from several congressional leaders, Rahul Gandhi tweeted on Saturday that the prime minister had “ceded Indian territory to Chinese aggression”.
PM ceded Indian territory to Chinese aggression.
If the land was Chinese:
1. Why were our soldiers killed?
2. Where were they killed? pic.twitter.com/vZFVqtu3fD– Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 20, 2020
The government retaliated the next day, saying that “attempts are being made to misinterpret” the Prime Minister’s comments and that the violence “occurred because China was seeking to erect structures directly across from the LAC (Line of actual control) and (had) refused to give up. “
The government also said that the “Prime Minister’s comments that there was no Chinese presence on our side of the LAC concerned the situation because of the bravery of our armed forces.”
Actor-politician Kamal Haasan joined the debate today, warning the government against “emotional manipulation of people” and calling for “accountability” and “transparency”.
Satellite images viewed by GalacticGaming show that the PLA (Chinese People’s Liberation Army) transported more than 200 trucks, four-wheel drive vehicles, bulldozers and earthmoving equipment to the Galwan region in the week before Monday’s violence.
Satellite images from June 9 show no Chinese vehicles near LAC in the Galwan area. A week later, there are at least 79 vehicles here, mostly trucks. It is 1.3 km from LAC.
In addition to the movement of vehicles and the movement of accommodation, the images show two main areas of concern – debris at the likely site of the clash, which occurred a day before the most recent satellite images were taken and a new angle to strengthen the point made by GalacticGaming earlier that China sought to disrupt, and perhaps even hinder, the flow of the Galwan River.
The confrontation itself took place at a point called PP-14 or Patrol Point 14 a few kilometers from LAC, the de facto border between India and China.
Troops from this region likely flocked to regions of India in the Galwan Valley, where hundreds of soldiers clashed at a height of 15,000 feet in the Himalayas.
