NEW DELHI: Amid the recurring border issues on the eastern front, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will chair a high-level meeting on Thursday with the Home Ministers, chief secretaries and Directors General of Police of five bordering States along the Indo-China border.
Singh will hold the meet with top state functionaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir. The Director General of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) Krishna Chaudhary will also attend the meet convened by the Border Management Division of the Union Home Ministry.
The meeting has been scheduled just two days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Meng Jianzhu, a top aide of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Apart from ways to enhance anti-terror cooperation, Singh is learnt to have urged Beijing to stop the practice of issuing stapled visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh.
Singh also sought support from the visiting Chinese dignitary to place JeM Masood Azhar on the UN sanctions list against individuals and groups linked to terror groups. The issue of illegal supply of arms to Northeast insurgent groups also figured in the meeting.
Meng is the Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday. Doval had briefed Singh ahead of his meeting with Meng.
Sources said the minister will seek to know from the Home Ministers, chief secretaries, and DGPs of the five States the issues concerning security and border management in their respective jurisdictions. The minister will also seek the status of infrastructure development in the bordering States.
“The daylong meeting will be held at Gangtok in Sikkim to review Indo-China border issues, including the infrastructure of the States on Indo-China border. The Union Home Ministry has also invited the Chief Ministers of these five States to attend the meeting,” an official said.
The Home Minister’s meeting with State functionaries comes amid recurring issues relating to face-offs between the troops of India and China. The latest one was reported from Demchok in Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) where the Chinese troops had stopped the work of a canal construction under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. A face-off situation was witnessed after the troops of the Indian army and ITBP reached the spot to check the aggressiveness of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops who were over 50 in number.