India has firmly rejected a newly formed Pakistan-China Joint Boundary Commission, calling the arrangement illegitimate and reiterating that Islamabad has no authority to negotiate over territory New Delhi considers its own.
India’s Official Position
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal addressed the commission’s inaugural meeting, held in Islamabad, telling reporters: “There is no boundary between Pakistan and China. We reject the so-called Joint Commission, which is without any legal basis.” The statement places New Delhi’s objection on record just as Islamabad and Beijing appear to be formalising joint arrangements along their shared frontier.
The Territory in Dispute
At the heart of India’s objection is the status of the Shaksgam Valley and adjoining areas, which Pakistan ceded to China under a 1963 agreement that New Delhi has never recognised. India maintains that Pakistan had no legal right to transfer control of that territory in the first place, since it falls within the boundaries of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Jaiswal reaffirmed that “the entire Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh… have been, are and will always remain integral and inalienable parts of India,” and called on Pakistan to vacate what New Delhi describes as illegally occupied territory rather than entering into fresh arrangements with Beijing over it.
CPEC Objection Reiterated
The ministry also used the occasion to restate India’s long-standing opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, on the grounds that sections of the corridor pass through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India has consistently argued that any third-country infrastructure or governance project routed through this territory infringes on its sovereignty.
Why It Matters
The rejection underscores how territorial disputes left over from the region’s colonial-era partition continue to shape diplomacy between India, Pakistan and China decades later. With India-Pakistan tensions already elevated following this week’s naval incident in the Arabian Sea, the boundary commission dispute adds another point of friction to an already complex triangular relationship, one that regional analysts expect will draw continued diplomatic pushback from New Delhi.