Trying to increase trust with China: Army chief

Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi said on Tuesday that the country’s northern borders, while stable now, require vigil.

- SATARUPA BHATTACHARIYA & BHASWAR KUMAR

“The situation on the northern front remains stable but needs constant vigil,” Dwivedi said at an annual news conference in New Delhi, ahead of Army Day (on Thursday).

He said interactions between the Indian and Chinese armies, from junior to senior ranks, as well as confidence-building measures at the diplomatic level, were all contributing to the gradual normalisa-tion of activities such as patrolling and grazing along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Army patrolling and grazing by herders along the LAC, the de facto border between India and China, were interrupted until recent months after a violent clash in the Galwan River valley in 2020, when 24 soldiers from both sides were killed.

Thousands of troops from India and China had amassed at the border in the aftermath.

“Our (the Indian Army’s) deployment along the LAC remains balanced and robust,” Dwivedi said, without specifying how many Indian (or Chinese) soldiers remain in their posts.

A meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in Russia in October 2024 led to disengagement at the LAC.