New Delhi:
The situation along the border "gets disturbed from time to time when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns", India's Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday. This came a day after Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) Director General Shatrujeet Kapur told troops that face-offs with Chinese troops at several locations in Arunachal Pradesh were continuing.
Kapur's comments sparked a row as the government has said in recent years that the situation along the border or the Line of Actual Control (LAC) is "stable", after having flared up significantly as 20 Indian soldiers were killed by Chinese troops at Galwan in Ladakh in June 2020.
Asked about the ITBP chief's comments about face-offs in Arunachal, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal declined to discuss specifics at a Friday briefing, saying, "I would refer you to the Ministry of Defence," but added, "As we have noted in the past, the situation in the India-China border areas gets disturbed from time to time when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns."
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He further said, "Both sides continue to use existing diplomatic and military mechanisms to resolve outstanding issues and avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation along the Line of Actual Control. The two sides have also agreed to discuss ways to improve understanding of LAC in appropriate areas for better border management."
He emphasised that India's views remain that "maintenance of peace and tranquility in the border areas is essential for the overall development of bilateral relations".
On Thursday, ITBP DG Kapur, set to retire at the end of this month, addressed his troops at a force base in Rajasthan, where he said, "In the past few days, a situation arose where a face-off happened at several locations in Arunachal, and it still continues."
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Kapur said the ITBP had raised a new combat team, the Shaurya commandos, which displayed its skills during the "ongoing" face-off with Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops at multiple places in Arunachal Pradesh. The ITBP chief described the China front as the force's "most difficult" border.
He called China powerful and India's "biggest adversary".
"It will be difficult to compete with China using traditional methods. They have modernised and invested heavily in their PLA, but drones are such that a small country can give a befitting contest to a bigger nation," Kapur said. "The role of traditional armies has changed since the drones arrived, and we must embrace drone and anti-drone systems in a big way," he said.
Sources later said Kapur's remarks were made in the context of routine deployment and preparedness along the border, and he did not refer to any specific incident.
Raised in 1962, the ITBP guards the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China.
Kapur's comments came weeks after Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani described the situation along the LAC as stable. Speaking to NDTV in September, he said, "I don't think there's any cause for concern."
Last week, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said peace and tranquillity in the border areas were essential to normalising ties with China. He also said any disturbance along the border would have consequences. "If you asked me, compared to where you were in 2025, is the relationship better today? I would say yes. Compared to 2024, even more so," Jaishankar said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Delhi.
At the political level, there has been a reset, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders meeting their counterparts, such as President Xi Jinping, over the past year. Indian trade imports from China continue to rise.