Amid border tension, India sends out a strong message to China

Though talks are on to defuse tension along the disputed boundary between India and China in eastern Ladakh, New Delhi has dug its heels in and conveyed to Beijing it would not suspend its ongoing projects to build roads and bridges in the border areas.

India has also conveyed to China that it would also not enter into any bilateral arrangement that might infringe upon its sovereign right to build such infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the de facto border between the two nations.

Signaling its willingness to continue building strategic infrastructure along the LAC, India is rather organising special trains to move nearly 12,000 construction workers from Jharkhand to the areas closer to its disputed boundary with China. The Ministry of Defence is working with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Railways as well as the State Government of Jharkhand to ferry the construction workers from Jharkhand, first to Chandigarh and Jammu, and then closer to the India-China LAC in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Kashmir, sources in New Delhi said.

India is apparently keen to send out a message to China with its latest move to speed up construction of infrastructure in the border areas although works on some projects had slowed down over the past few weeks due to lockdown enforced to contain the OVID-19 pandemic.

The current tension between Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along the LAC in eastern Ladakh had its origin in China’s unease over construction of infrastructure by India in the border areas. Beijing apparently perceived construction of such infrastructure as a prelude to a military move by New Delhi towards Aksai Chin – a disputed area India claims as its own and accuses China of illegally occupying.

Currently 61 Indo-China border roads are under construction. With only 25 per cent of works on these roads pending, the Centre now gives a push to complete the remaining works early.

Of these 61 roads, 12 with a length of 1064 km are in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, according to a report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Defence tables in the House earlier this year.

The Ladakh roads that would give India better access to areas close to the LAC are included among these dozen. The work of four of them has been completed.

These roads are also among the 73 Indo-China Border Roads identified by the China Study Group within the government long ago.

While work on some of these roads have been completed, the Modi government in 2018-19 prepared a five year (2018-23) long term roll on works plan for construction and improvement of 265 roads of 14,224 km length and four bridges in 13 states. The Union Territory of Ladakh will have 44 of these roads (nearly 3200 km) and one bridge.

Tension on the north bank of the Pangong Tso lake escalated on May 5 when the Chinese PLA attacked Indian Army soldiers with sticks and stones in an area perceived in New Delhi to be well within the LAC’s Indian side. They also demolished on May 6 some makeshift structures built by Indian Army soldiers.

The Chinese PLA followed up by building a bunker in order to restrict the access to an area where Indian Army soldiers regularly patrolled. The PLA later deployed nearly 5000 soldiers in a large camp set up recently at Galwan Valley within the territory claimed by China – obviously to support the smaller number of troops, who transgressed the LAC in several locations and entered into the areas claimed by India. The Indian Army also rushed additional troops “in adequate numbers” in response to the deployment by the Chinese PLA. The build-ups by both sides escalated tension along the LAC and the military officials and diplomats of both sides are now holding discussions to defuse the situation.