India on Tuesday rejected Beijing’s objection to New Delhi announcing standard names for 28 places and features in Ladakh, asserting that the Union Territory was an “integral and inalienable” part of the country.“No amount of denial by the Chinese side can change this established fact,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.Also read: ‘Never recognised it’: China calls India’s naming of 28 Ladakh locations ‘illegal, null, void’India’s reaction came hours after China opposed New Delhi’s move to assign standardised names, saying it “never recognised” the Union Territory of Ladakh and termed New Delhi’s latest ‘naming exercise’ for 28 locations in Ladakh as “illegal, null and void”.Last week, the Union Home Ministry assigned standard names to places and geographical features in Ladakh, including certain key border friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and several lakes and peaks across the LAC in Aksai Chin, illegally held by China since the 1950s.Jaiswal, in his response to China, said the press release by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, which is being referred to by China, is self-explanatory. “The announcement mentions that the 28 places/features located in the UT of Ladakh have been identified with standard place and feature names on the official map of the Survey of India,” Jaiswal added. Identifying these places formally on the Survey of India map of the UT of Ladakh is aimed at facilitating their accurate recognition and better awareness among the public at large, he added.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was quoted by state-owned news agency Xinhua on Tuesday as saying: “China has never recognised the so-called Union Territory of Ladakh illegally and unilaterally established by India and firmly opposes India’s publication of standard place names in Ladakh.”In what read like a possible reference to Aksai Chin and the naming of several features by India on October 2, Mao said such moves by the Indian side are illegal and null and void, and cannot alter the fact that the western section of the China-India boundary area has always belonged to China.She made the remarks in response to a question at Tuesday’s press briefing in Beijing after the Government of India said it had identified 28 locations in Ladakh by standard names on an official map.Crucially, Mao’s words come two years after the militaries of both sides pulled back from a four-year-long military stand-off along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. There were a series of clashes along the un-demarcated LAC, notably at Galwan in June 2020.The UT of Ladakh was carved out of the state of Jammu and Kashmir more than seven years ago, in August 2019. Parliament had amended Article 370 of the Constitution that granted special status to J-K. Two separate UTs were created — Ladakh and J-K.The LAC — some 832 km in eastern Ladakh — is not demarcated on the ground, with both sides having overlapping claims.