India is to investigate whether its use of Chinese-made telecom equipment in sensitive border and insurgency-hit areas could jeopardise national security, a minister said Friday. "It is a security issue. The government is looking into the matter," junior telecom minister Sachin Pilot said in New Delhi, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. "Whatever prudent decision is jointly recommended by the ministries of home affairs and communication and information technology, the government will not hesitate to take it," Pilot added. A report this week in the Hindustan Times newspaper said India's intelligence agencies had warned that Chinese products could have embedded elements enabling China to launch a cyber attack or shut down the equipment. China and India share uneasy relations thanks to an unresolved border dispute dating back to a brief but bitter war in 1962. China's close ties with India's arch rival Pakistan are also a cause of tension. But bilateral trade between the economic rivals has zoomed to exceed 40 billion dollars, according to industry and government estimates. India is battling myriad insurgencies, ranging from an Islamist rebellion in its Himalayan region of Kashmir to Maoist unrest in a vast swathe of eastern and central India and tribal separatism in its northeast.
SOURCE: ECONOMIC TIMES
SOURCE: ECONOMIC TIMES
