China’s top diplomat warned Sunday that any steps towards Taiwan’s independence would be “harshly punished” after the self-ruled island defied Beijing’s warnings and chose pro-sovereignty candidate Lai Ching-te as president.

Voters on the island spurned Beijing’s repeated calls not to vote for Lai, delivering a comfortable victory for a man China’s ruling Communist Party sees as a dangerous separatist.

Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has never renounced force to bring it under its control, responded to Lai’s victory by saying it would not change the “inevitable trend of China’s reunification”.

“If anyone on the island of Taiwan thinks of going for independence, they will be trying to split apart China’s territory, and will certainly be harshly punished by both history and the law,” Wang Yi said in a joint press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry in Cairo.

“This is a dead end,” he added.

“No matter what the results of the election are, they cannot change the basic fact that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it,” Wang said Sunday.

“Taiwan has never been a country. It wasn’t in the past, and it certainly won’t be in the future,” he added.

Efforts to that end, Wang warned, “seriously threatens the well-being of Taiwan compatriots, seriously harms the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation, and seriously jeopardises peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait region”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Former Union Minister Milind Deora, who crossed over to Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena from the Congress today, has told NDTV that “Congress’s politics felt suffocating and toxic” and that he wished them well. The 47-year-old, who was among the party’s disgruntled section, slammed the party earlier today as well, saying it had changed greatly since his father joined it in 1968.

As an example, he said the party had resorted to name calling and personal attacks on industrialists and businessmen.”The same party that ushered in economic reforms 30 years ago, is a party that is abusing industrialists, businessmen and calling businessmen ‘anti-nationals’,” he had said.

In an exclusive interview to NDTV, he expanded on it.

“My father told me to speak well on Day One of politics… It is about working with people,”he said..

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who brought the 1991 reforms, “never named industrialists and attacked them,” Mr Deora said.

“He (Manmohan Singh) questioned institutions. Theb Congress is personally attacking businessmen. It is very sad that once a great party has gone down to a level of calling people names and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi names. I’ve never made such statements in my 20 years of politics,” he added.

The “Chalo Lakshadweep” call on Indian social media amid a stand-off with Maldives over tourism may not even get off the ground given multiple constraints, including the lack of direct flights and the minuscule number — 150 — of hotel rooms. Even if it does, the tourist inflow has to be controlled in view of the fragile ecology of the island that has been propped up by a rulebook that lays down the number of tourists the islands can contain each day, Mohammad Faizal, the MP from Lakshadweep, told NDTV.

Lakshadweep, being made of coral, is “very sensitive and ecologically very fragile,” Mr Faizal said.

This is why, the Supreme Court appointed Justice Ravindran Commision has come up with an “integrated Island management plan”.

This is the “bible for development,” which is consulted before roads, jetties or other infrastructure projects can be taken up.

This “widely accepted” plan of the commission also suggests the “carrying capacity” of the islands and the  number of tourists they can have, he said.

In view of this, Lakshadweep at this time is looking at “high-end controlled tourism,” he said, where the union territory plans to raise maximum revenue from very controlled tourism. The tourists who come in also have to give “consent towards environment,” he added.

Only 10 of Lakshadweep’s 36 islands are inhabited. Currently only 8-10 per cent of Lakshadweep’s population depends on tourism. The islands were not on the list of many people either. But with the row with Maldives, many on social media are declaring that Laskshadweep will be their next destination.

The diplomatic row started as Maldivian ministers made derogatory comments following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s widely circulated post about his visit to the Lakshadweep islands.

Three Maldivian ministers were sacked and the country’s Opposition criticised the comments. But Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu was defiant and it gave a frsh boost to the country’s ties with China.

Today the Maldives President gave a deadline to India to withdraw its troops from the island nation. The Indian military personnel should leave the nation by March 15, he said.