Chief of Defense Staff Bipin Rawat dismissed reports that mention that the Chinese are constructing villages in the Indian territory of Arunachal Pradesh. Earlier this month, the US Department of Defence’s (DOD) report to the Congress on the Chinese military had a special section on the ongoing border standoff between India and China. The report had also pointed out that China was taking “incremental and tactical” steps to press its claim, explicitly referring to the construction of a 100-home civilian village in Arunachal Pradesh in 2020.
At the weekly briefing, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that India has “taken note” of the DOD report, which “also makes a reference to construction activities by the Chinese side along the India-China border areas particularly in the Eastern Sector”. Bagchi then asserted that China had “undertaken construction activities in the past several years along the border areas including in the areas that it has illegally occupied over the decades”.
China claims approximately 38,000 square kilometres (sq. km) in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This is in addition to the 5,180 sq. km that Pakistan signed off to China in 1963. Besides, China has also laid claim to another 90,000 sq. km in the territory of Arunachal Pradesh in India.
The senior MEA diplomat added that India has “always conveyed its strong protest to such activities through diplomatic means and will continue to do so in the future”.
Speaking at the Times Now Summit 2021, Rawat, however, claimed that China had only been carrying out construction on its side of the LAC. He also flatly asserted that “as far as we are concerned, no such village development has taken place on our side of the LAC”, referring to the US report’s claims. “The present controversy – that has erupted – that the Chinese have come across into our territory and built a new village is not true,” he said.
He claimed that China was probably constructing some buildings for accommodation of its soldiers along the border, whose numbers had risen exponentially.
“But what I wish to come out with is that the Chinese are building villages possibly for billeting and locating their civilians or for their military in the future all along the LAC, particularly after the recent face-offs that we have had,” Rawat added. He also said that both the Indian and the Chinese forces have posts on their respective sides of the LAC.
“Wherever the Chinese have now developed their posts, some old dilapidated huts [already] existed in that area. Some of those huts have been broken and modern huts are being built. They are building this infrastructure, these kinds of so-called villages, which are well within their side of the LAC. They have not transgressed anywhere on our perception of the LAC,” he said.
