The Congress on Friday accused BJP leaders of normalising Chinese actions along the border after Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu said transgressions had occurred but were not new, news agency PTI reported.
Khandu had said a day earlier that the situation in Arunachal Pradesh’s border areas was normal and that the Indian armed forces were guarding the frontier effectively. He asserted that there was “no matter of tension” at present.
The chief minister was responding to a question about recent comments that confrontations with Chinese troops continued at several locations along the border in Arunachal Pradesh.
Without elaborating, Khandu said, “The Chinese do not consider the McMahon Line, bordering Arunachal, so sometimes it happens… Arunachal shares a very long border with Tibet-China, nearly 1,200 km”.
“Transgression has happened, no doubt. But it keeps happening; it is not a new thing. Because there is no line demarcation at the border, it is not defined,” he said, without specifying the incident to which he was referring.
Reacting to the remarks, Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said Khandu had dismissed reports of Chinese incursions in Taksing earlier this summer but had now admitted that “no doubt transgression has happened”.
“So much for the PM’s ‘na koi ghusa hai’. Worse, he treats it as normal: ‘It keeps happening. It is nothing new.’ ‘The situation is quite normal now.’ ‘Our soldiers go (to) that side, their patrolling parties also come (to) this side sometimes,'” Ramesh said in a post on X.
“The CM said this a week after the ITBP Director General confirmed face-offs at several locations in Arunachal. Some are still ongoing,” he said.
Ramesh said the most disturbing aspect was that the chief minister had blamed a border that was “not defined”. “Instead of asserting India’s position, BJP leaders are rationalising Chinese actions,” he said.
“Nothing about this is normal. This is the new abnormal. Corps Commander talks had to be held at Wacha-Damai in September 2026 after the Taksing face-off,” Ramesh said.
The Congress leader claimed that local residents had reported People’s Liberation Army camps on the Indian side and that patrolling points had again been lost. He also said China was renaming Indian towns and building a 60,000-MW dam at the Great Bend.
“Yet the self-anointed Vishwaguru rolls out the red carpet for Chinese capital, even as a record USD 112.6 billion trade deficit crushes our MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises). ‘Make in India’ has become ‘Import from China’,” Ramesh said.
“The issue is no longer just Chinese transgressions. It is the BJP’s growing tendency to treat them as normal,” he added.
Ramesh also claimed that the Arunachal Pradesh chief minister would say what he was told to say by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“After all, he has been continuing in office even though the Supreme Court had on April 6, 2026 ordered a CBI inquiry into decisions he had taken as PWD Minister between 2015 and 2025 that reportedly benefited his family members to the tune of over Rs 1,200 crore,” Ramesh said.
Last week, Indo-Tibetan Border Police Director General Shatrujeet Kapur said confrontations with Chinese troops continued at several locations along the border in Arunachal Pradesh, triggering a political row, according to PTI.
Khandu was speaking to the media shortly before the inauguration of the 14th International Tourism Mart in the presence of Union Tourism Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and other dignitaries. Asked about the row, he said he had learnt about the matter through news reports and that it was being “discussed around”.
The Congress also attacked Modi over the reported face-offs, alleging “deafening silence” from him and his government while the “self-styled vishwaguru’s calibrated concessions” to China continued.
The party has previously criticised the Modi government’s handling of relations with China and alleged Chinese incursions. The government has rejected the opposition’s claims, while the BJP has accused the Congress of demoralising the armed forces.
The latest exchange centres on Khandu’s statement that border transgressions occur because the boundary is not demarcated, with the Congress arguing that such incidents should not be treated as normal.
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