India’s foreign minister has said that the country has scaled up troop deployment along a disputed border with China to an unprecedented level.
S Jaishankar added that India wouldn’t let China “unilaterally change” the status quo at the border. His comments came days after Indian and Chinese forces clashed in a disputed area along the border in Arunachal Pradesh state.
India said that the encounter began due to “encroachment” by Chinese troops.
China’s foreign ministry has said that according to their knowledge, the situation on the border was “generally stable” and the two sides were maintaining dialogue on the issue.
India and China share a disputed 3,440km (2,100 mile) long de facto border – called the Line of Actual Control, or LAC – which is poorly demarcated. Soldiers on either side come face to face at many points, and tensions sometimes escalate into skirmishes or clashes.
Both sides have been trying to de-escalate since a violent brawl in June 2020 in the Galwan Valley in the Ladakh region much further to the west – 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers died in the battle.
Credit: bbc.com
