“Hitting out at the BJP over the remark on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) of its Minister Gen V K Singh (retd), Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said he should be sacked for “helping China make a case against India.

On Singh's remark, Gandhi tweeted, “Why is a BJP minister helping China make a case against India? He should've been sacked. Not sacking him means insulting every Indian Jawan.”

Attending a programme in Madurai on Sunday last week, Singh, who is the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways in the NDA government, had said that India has transgressed the LAC more often than the Chinese side based on perceptions, contradicting India's official position. “…none of you come to know how many times we have transgressed as per our perception. We don't announce it. Chinese media does not cover it… Let me assure you, if China has transgressed 10 times, we must have done it at least 50 times, as per our perception,” Singh said.

Reacting to his remark, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin claimed this was an “unwitting confession” of “frequent acts of trespass”.

“This is an unwitting confession by the Indian side. For a long time, the Indian side has conducted frequent acts of trespass in the border area in an attempt to encroach on China's territory and constantly created disputes and frictions, which is the root cause of the tensions at the China-India border,” Wenbin said.

“We urge the Indian side to follow through on the consensus, agreements and treaties it reached with China, and uphold peace and stability in the border region with concrete actions,” he added.

India's official position has been that “the Indian side has never undertaken any actions across the LAC”.

Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a bitter border standoff in eastern Ladakh for over nine months as multiple rounds of diplomatic and military talks have not yet produced any major breakthrough.