SRINAGAR: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has told Parliament that China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 square kilometres of Indian territory seized during the 1962 Sino-Indian War.
Responding to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh said that successive Indian governments have pursued a series of diplomatic initiatives with Beijing over the past four decades to resolve the boundary dispute.
Formal border negotiations began in December 1981 following Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua’s visit to New Delhi earlier that year, with eight rounds held at the secretary level until November 1987. The talks were followed by the creation of the India–China Joint Working Group on the boundary question during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in December 1988. This forum met for 15 rounds between 1989 and 2005.
In June 2003, during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China, the two sides appointed Special Representatives (SRs) to explore a political framework for a settlement. Five rounds of SR talks culminated in the signing of the “Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question” on April 11, 2005.
From 2005 to 2012, 10 more SR meetings were held, concluding with a “Common Understanding” on elements of a possible framework in December 2012. Since then, eight further rounds have taken place, the most recent in Beijing on December 18, 2024.
The minister said the government remains committed to resolving the issue through dialogue while safeguarding India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
