| Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected an August 2013 request by senior officials in his government to correct a serious error, dating back over 50 years, in India's official maps. In effect, this oversight in official maps mistakenly gave China control of two Arunachal Pradesh "fishtails" (see map), a territory as large as Sikkim or Goa, and continuously inhabited by Indian citizens. Key officials advising Manmohan Singh confirmed the incident. Although this assertion could not be independently verified, a former official claimed that "the problem with Manmohan Singh was his inability to say no to 10 Janpath". According to him, "Sonia Gandhi took the line that in the interests of good relations with China and Pakistan, we should keep turning the other cheek", and that in the matter of the Arunachal Pradesh map, rectification of Nehru-era maps, which incorrectly omitted both Fishtail 1 and Fishtail 2 from Indian territory, would draw attention to an error committed during the period in office of Jawaharlal Nehru.
"Classification as state secret of papers, which ought to be made public, has been motivated by the zeal of Sonia Gandhi (which has been shared by every Prime Minister of India until Manmohan Singh to protect the image of Jawaharlal Nehru and other members of the family at the expense of transparency", according to a retired diplomat, who has direct knowledge of key records that show a very different picture of the situation prevailing in those periods than what the scanty flow of released information contains.
The two "fishtail" formations in Arunachal Pradesh were omitted from maps prepared by the Survey of India during the 1960s, although the area has always been under the control of India. No public records exist as to why and how such a significant error was made. In 1962, recognising the fact that this territory was Indian, soldiers from the People's Liberation Army of China, who had occupied the fishtails during November 1962, withdrew after the unilateral ceasefire declared by Beijing that month. "Since then and before, the area within the two fishtails has always been occupied by our troops, as well as by the Mishmi tribe, all of whom are citizens of India. Our claim on the territory is incontestable and our maps ought to have been updated to reflect this," a senior official stated. |