Government News

"LAC Situation Stable But Sensitive, No Friction In A Year" : the Army Chief of Staff

By - 29 Jan 2024 05:14 PM

There haven't been any more areas of friction between China and India in the past year, Chief of Army Staff General Manoj Pande stated on Monday, despite maintaining that the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) is stable "but sensitive."

The Chief of Army Staff stated in an interview with ANI that since April 2020, there have been 20 meetings of senior higher military commanders and 14 meetings of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on China-India Border Affairs.The Line of Actual Control (LAC) situation is sensitive but stable. We haven't had any more conflict areas in this over the past year or so. Regarding our efforts to find a solution, we are still in communication and dialogue with the enemy on a military and diplomatic level, General Pande stated."Since April 2020, we have held 14 WMCC meetings and 20 senior higher military commander level meetings," he stated. We therefore hope that through these discussions, a solution can be reached."

The 3,488 km border between India and China passes through Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Jammu and Kashmir.

Since May 2020, when the Chinese troops tried to aggressively change the status quo on LAC in eastern Ladakh, both sides have been deployed in forward positions near Patrolling Point 15, which emerged as a friction point in the wake of the Galwan clash.General Pande gave a briefing on the Army's readiness levels along the northern border, stating, "We are maintaining adequate reserves to be able to deal with any contingencies and our deployment remains robust as well as balanced."

"As all of this is going on, we are also concentrating on strengthening our capacity in these domains by introducing better systems, modernizing our fleet, and introducing safer vehicles, drones for surveillance, improved radio sets for communication, etc. We are concentrating on and exerting effort on infrastructure development at the same time. Be it the habitat, forward connectivities to the LAC, or strategic road connectivity...it also includes extending power supply to our forward troops, improving communication in terms of 5G communication to our troops deployed in forward areas," the Army chief said.

"We are also working alongside other government agencies, local administration and the local population to make sure that our preparedness levels along the LAC always remain high," he stated.