Itanagar, Apr 9: Asserting that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said that ‘no country can grab an inch of land of the country’.

Stating that there was no phase called infrastructure development during the Congress regime, Singh, without taking the name of China or Pakistan, claimed that Congress people had ‘handed over’ thousands of square kilometers of India’s land to neighbouring countries.

“For this, I wouldn’t blame anyone, but today I want to assure you that now, India’s land will not be able to go any country’s grip,” the senior BJP leader said while addressing an election rally at Namsai under the Arunachal East Parliamentary Constituency.

Referring to recent renaming of 30 different places in Arunachal Pradesh by neighbouring China, Rajnath said, “Changing names would not do anything.”

“I want to tell our neighbour that if we change the names of some provinces/states of China tomorrow, will those states of China be ours?” he wondered.

Cautioning that China should abstain from doing such tricks, the Defence Minister said, “I believe that such actions will worsen the relations between India and China.”

Stating that we should ever remember what former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee used to say – “friends do change in life, but neighbours do not change”, he said, “This is the thought of India.”

“We want to maintain good, cordial relationships with all our neighbours. But, if any one tries to harm India’s pride, prestige and self-respect, I want to send across the loud message that, it’s natural that India today has that capability to respond to that.”

Taking a dig at the grand old party, Singh said, “Congress had a way of working. We had corrected the mistakes of Congress and developed the border infrastructure. We consider the country’s border villages as the first village, which the Congress used to dub them as last village. Our efforts are on bring rapid development in the border villages,” he said.

Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken the firm resolve to make India a developed country by 2047, Rajnath said, “Viksit Bharat is not a slogan, Viksit Bharat is a commitment for us. The BJP-led NDA government under Modi is taking the country ahead and for that, your wholehearted support and cooperation is needed,” Rajnath added while seeing people’s support for BJP’s MP candidate for the Arunachal East seat Tapir Gao.

Among others, State’s Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein and MP Tapir Gao also addressed the rally.

UNI