The Chinese government, the Ministry of Civil of Affairs on Sunday released a list of 11 places along with a map showing the parts of Arunachal Pradesh inside the southern Tibetan region, referring it as “Zangnan, the Southern part of Tibet.”

It is the third time; the Chinese government has come up with renaming of places in an effort to claim India’s Arunachal Pradesh.

Reportedly, the Chinese have released the 11 “standardized geographical names” in Mandarin, Tibetan and Pinyin characters with exact Latitude and Longitude coordinates.

The notification dated April 2 (No. 548) said that “according to the relevant provisions of the State Council on the management of geographical names, [China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs], together with relevant departments, has standardized some geographical names in southern Tibet. The third batch of supplementary place names for public use in southern Tibet (11 in total) is now officially announced.”

The list includes five mountain peaks, two more populated areas, two land areas and two rivers.

Earlier, in 2017, the first batch of six places was announced and the second batch of 15 places in 2021.

Following which, spokesperson Arindam Bagchi in 2021, said “Arunachal Pradesh has always been, and will always be an integral part of India. Assigning invented names to places in Arunachal Pradesh does not alter this fact,”

The announcement also comes ahead of a visit to India in April by China’s newly appointed Defence Minister General Li Shangfu to attend the SCO Defence Ministers’ meetings, and also a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang to attend the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting in May.

(Source-The Hindu)