After a Pentagon report claimed about a Chinese village built along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Arunachal Pradesh sector, sources in India’s security establishment said that the mentioned village along the disputed border in Upper Subansiri district is in territory controlled by China. The annual report by the US Department on military and security developments said that China has built a large village in a disputed area in the Arunachal Pradesh sector.
On the mention of the Chinese village along the India-China border in the report, the sources said, “The village along the disputed border in Upper Subansiri district is in territory controlled by China. They have, for years, maintained an Army post in the region and the various constructions undertaken by the Chinese have not happened in a short time.”
Explaining further, the sources said the village has been built by China in an area that was occupied by it around six decades back. “The village has been built by China in an area that was occupied by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after overrunning an Assam Rifles post in 1959, in an operation known as Longju incident along the frontier in Arunachal Pradesh,” the sources said.
The reaction from the Indian side comes after the Pentagon report claimed that in 2020, China built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the Chinese Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC. “These and other infrastructure development efforts along India-China have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media,” the Pentagon said. In contrast, China has attempted to blame India for provoking the standoff through India’s increased infrastructure development near the LAC, the report said.
For the unversed, the border standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries erupted on May 5 last year following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas, and both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry. As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process in the Gogra area in August and in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake in February.
However, India and China failed to make any headway at their 13th round of military talks on October 10 in resolving the standoff in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh. Each side currently has around 50,000 to 60,000 troops along the LAC in the sensitive sector. India has voiced hope that China will work with it to bring a satisfactory resolution to the current issues, keeping in view each other’s sensitivities and interests.
(with inputs from PTI)
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