NEW DELHI: There have been no recent incidents of “transgression” at the India-China border and the situation has been “peaceful”, S S Deswal, Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, said on Wednesday. Deswal said the standoffs essentially arise out of “perceptional differences” of the border.
He asserted that the ITBP dominates such areas of dispute now and has increased patrolling as the number of its border posts have gone up by 25 over the last five years. He was speaking on the eve of ITBP’s 58th Raising Day.
The ITBP has also trained 200 personnel in Mandarin for better intelligence gathering and effective communication at the border, officials said.
They added that the force is committed to convert all its border outposts (BOPs) into composite BOPs that can maintain normal temperatures even in high altitude-areas and rarefied atmosphere.
Deswal admitted that two such projects to build climate-controlled BOPs and frontier roads along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China have been “delayed” by construction agencies, but said efforts are being made to expedite them. The construction of the first composite outpost at Lukung (near Pangong Tso, Ladakh), entrusted to NBCC, has been delayed.
Deswal said the force is assessing the 3,488-km border area, running from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, to assess creation of more such BOPs. The composite outposts will have climate-controlled temperatures for troopers who guard the LAC where the source of energy will be clean.