India resents construction of Teshan road

New Delhi: The Government of India have declared that China’s agreement with Pakistan on the opening of the “Teshan road” in Gilgit linking Pakistan- occupied Kashmir with Sinkiang in China was an “interference with Indian sovereignty in Kashmir”.

B. R. Bhagat, minister of state for external affairs, told the Rajya Sabha today that this agreement “is in line with the collusive Sino- Pak measures directed against India”.

“The government is fully aware of the threat to our security posed by this road and everything possible has been done to safeguard our defence and security,” he added.

Bhagat, who was replying to a call attention notice raised by the leader of the Jana Sangh group, Sunder Singh Bhandari, on the subject, also declared that the Indian government had lodged “strong protests” to China and Pakistan against this agreement.

In the protest note to China, the government had firmly repudiated any agreements provisional or otherwise, regarding “our own territories arrived at between their parties, who have no legal or constitutional ‘ locus standi’ of any kind.”

“No matter what pretence or purpose the so- called agreement may be for,” the Government of India reiterate that they shall take no cognisance of it and that “it will have no legal or constitutional validity whatsoever.”