Reject China’s attempts to alter ground reality in Shaksgam Valley: MEA

Jan: Rejecting the Chinese infrastructure build-up in the Shaksgam Valley in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) through the so-called China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of 1963, India on Friday reiterated that it reserves the right to take necessary measures to safeguard its interests in the region.

Addressing reporters during a regular media briefing in New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal highlighted once again that India has never accepted the so-called China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of 1963, through which Pakistan unlawfully attempted to cede the area to China.

“Regarding Chinese infrastructure buildup via CPEC as also in the Shaksgam Valley, which is Indian territory. We have never recognised the so-called China-Pakistan boundary agreement of 1963. We have consistently maintained that the agreement is illegal and invalid. We do not recognise the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) either, which passes through Indian territory that is under forcible and illegal occupation of Pakistan,” said Jaiswal.

“The entire Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are an integral and inalienable part of India. This has been clearly conveyed to Pakistani and Chinese authorities several times. We have consistently protested with the Chinese side against attempts to alter the ground reality in the Shaksgam Valley. We further reserve the right to take necessary measures to safeguard our interests,” he added.

Reframing the two-front narrative, EAM Jaishankar said in July 2025 that by recalling a pattern of military, economic, and diplomatic alignment between Islamabad and Beijing over six decades, he sought to reframe the “two-front threat” as not a product of contemporary escalation but a structural reality that Indian diplomacy and defence must now reckon with decisively.

The Minister’s remarks were aimed not only at rebutting immediate Parliamentary criticism but at laying out a layered timeline of geopolitical convergence between India’s principal adversaries – a convergence that he argued long predates the current government and demands sober reflection beyond partisan lines.

“The person who said (two front threat) it, must have missed the history lesson from school,” EAM Jaishankar quipped, before tracing the arc from Pakistan’s cession of the Shaksgam Valley to China in 1963, to Bhutto’s initiation of nuclear cooperation in 1976, and landmark developments including Gwadar’s transfer in 2013 and the formal launch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) thereafter.

“We are getting warnings now,” he noted pointedly, “but this collaboration has been going on for 60 years.”

IANS