It should be tit-for-tat: Himanta on China renaming Arunachal areas

Diphu: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday urged the Indian government to adopt a "tit-for-tat" approach in response to China's efforts to rename places in Arunachal Pradesh.

Sarma suggested that India should counter by assigning its own names for 60 "Tibetan areas of China." "My request to government of India is that we should give 60 geographical names to Tibetan areas of China," Sarma told reporters here.

While maintaining that "it should be always tit-for-tat", the CM added, "But I don’t want to comment as it is a policy decision of the government of India. But if they have named 30, we should name 60."

China had released a fourth list of 30 new names of various places in Arunachal Pradesh amid Beijing's stepped-up assertions in recent weeks to re-emphasise its claim over the Indian state.

The Ministry of External Affairs has firmly rejected the attempts by China to rename places in Arunachal Pradesh and asserted that assigning "invented names" will not alter the reality that the state "is, has been, and will always be" an integral and inalienable part of India.