Government downplays report on Chinese construction in disputed area

New Delhi - The Indian government has downplayed reports about a proposed construction of an observatory by China in Aksai Chin, a remote part of Jammu and Kashmir's Ladakh region it occupied after the 1962 war.

The report "is a volatile concoction of facts mixed with fiction", official sources said, a day after a newspaper reported that China was pushing Japan and South Korea to establish an astronomical observatory in Aksai Chin.

But official sources here said that the report was not completely true.

"The fact is that the observatory is coming up and the inaccuracies are in terms of its location," said a source. The sources said there "is no question of sovereignty" on the location of the observatory.

The report said one of the proposed sites for the observatory was at Ali in Aksai Chin, which India says is its territory.