Hours after United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, accompanied by her son Rahul Gandhi, started their five-day China visit, the Bhartiya Janata Party slammed the Communist country for staking its claim over Arunachal Pradesh.
Addressing newsmen at the party headquarters, BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy accused the Chinese of infiltrating the Arunachal Pradesh border 140 times and encroaching on 40,000 sq kilometers of land.
"The BJP notes that the incursions are simply not the inadvertent misadventures of lost Chinese patrols but instead point towards the existence of a carefully designed strategy to undermine India's territorial integrity," he said.
While Gandhi is due to attend the celebrations lined up to mark the re-election of Prime Minister Hu Jintao as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his deputy Anand Sharma are also on an official visit to China.
The BJP spokesperson claimed that their member of parliament from Arunachal Pradesh Khiran Rijuju has also confirmed China's attempts to infiltrate into Indian territory.