What about Galwan, Ladakh and trade deficit, asks Cong

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded his bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit, the Congress on Sunday questioned the government’s stance on various issues related to China.The Opposition party confronted him with four questions, “Did Modi’s 2020 statement after the Galwan clash weaken India’s negotiating position? Why has India lost traditional patrolling and grazing access in eastern Ladakh? Why the government’s position on China’s alleged support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor changed? Why has the trade deficit with Beijing climbed to a record $112.6 billion?”

Congress general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh acknowledged that improving relations with China was desirable. However, he accused Modi of pursuing “calibrated capitulation” instead of normalisation.

Referring to the Galwan clash on June 15-16, 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed, Ramesh questioned Modi’s statement at an all-party meeting four days later that nobody had entered Indian territory and no one remained inside it, saying the remarks had never been withdrawn. “Has this not greatly weakened our subsequent negotiating position?” Ramesh asked.

The Congress leader then flagged the border situation in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. He alleged that traditional Indian patrolling and grazing rights had been surrendered across stretches of eastern Ladakh, while reports of Chinese encroachment and loss of access to patrolling points had emerged from Arunachal Pradesh.

Ramesh also pointed to Beijing’s repeated renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh and its claims over the state, besides flagging China’s proposed 60,000-MW Medog mega-dam on the Brahmaputra. He said the project had raised serious concerns for the North-East’s water security.

Talking about Operation Sindoor, Ramesh recalled that Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Rahul Singh had spoken in July 2025 about China’s role in assisting Pakistan during the operation. However, former Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan at a lecture on August 25 this year, and asked whether the change was intended to alter the atmospherics ahead of the Modi-Xi meeting, he added.

The Congress leader further said India’s trade deficit with China had touched a record $112.6 billion in 2025-26. Claiming that India’s dependence on China for critical raw materials, components and intermediates had reached worrying levels, he asked the government for a roadmap to reverse it. “‘Make in India’ and ‘Import from China’ have become two sides of the same coin,” he said.