New Delhi: Army Chief General Manoj Pande has said the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh is “stable” but “sensitive” while asserting that the Indian troops are maintaining a “high state” of preparedness to deal with any challenge, PTI reported.
General Pande held a customary press conference on Thursday, January 11, ahead of Army Day (January 15), where he said talks have been on between India and China at military and diplomatic levels to find a resolution to remaining issues.
“While we continue to maintain adequate reserves to deal effectively with any contingency that may arise, we are also focussed on capability development,” he said, according to Hindustan Times.
India and China have been in a military standoff since May 2020 and a full resolution of the border crisis through ongoing negotiations still appears distant. So far, there have been four rounds of disengagement from Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso, Gogra (PP-17A), and Hot Springs (PP-15), yet there are tens of thousands of troops each and advanced weaponry deployed in the Ladakh theatre.
On the other hand, the Army chief said India is “closely monitoring” the situation as Bhutan and China are currently engaged in resolving their longstanding boundary dispute. “Bhutan and we (India) share mutual security concerns which both of us are aware of. The ongoing talks on the boundary which you alluded to, we are closely monitoring. We are interacting with our friends in Bhutan on a transparent and regular basis,” he added.
He termed the relationship between India and Bhutan as one based on “utmost trust, goodwill, and mutual understanding”. “This relationship also transcends into the military domain as we have IMTRAT (Indian Military Training Team) right from the early 1960s. They are at the centre of our relationship,” General Pande underlined.
With Bhutan and China making progress on their boundary talks, there is a talk of possible security implications for India.
The Army chief also spoke on the resurgence of terror on the border with Pakistan, where four Indian soldiers were killed in an ambush in the Rajouri-Poonch area. He said the Army has sent more troops to the Rajouri-Poonch sector in the face of the resurgence of terror in the sensitive area, while reorienting its units operating in the area. He said steps are being taken to strengthen the intelligence network for conducting counterterror operations effectively.
“I will not get into what has gone wrong, rather I will say what it is that we are doing. We have increased our deployment in those areas and reorientated some of the units. We are strengthening our human intelligence network as well as technical intelligence. That is something we are working on,” he explained.
Terror returned to the Rajouri-Poonch sector on December 21 last year when four soldiers were killed in an ambush – the latest in a series of attacks that have claimed the lives of several army personnel during the last year. In 2023, 71 terrorists were killed in Jammu and Kashmir, including 51 in the Valley and 20 in the Rajouri-Poonch area.