Amid tension with China, Govt approves more border troops

New Delhi: With the tension along the Sino-Indian border refusing to abate, the cabinet approved the induction of close to 9,000 troops into the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). This, sources said, will entail raising seven new battalions and a new sector headquarters.

With ITBP being the first line of defense on the China border, sources said, this will strengthen the security grid on the LAC where Indian and Chinese forces have clashed multiple times in Eastern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh in the last few years and Indian forces continue to be denied access to many of their traditional patrolling points in the Depsang plains and the Charding Nalla region in Ladakh. It will also help give the ITBP, which has 100 per cent deployment most of the year, the luxury to afford rest, recuperation and better training for its personnel.

“This has been a long-pending proposal from the ITBP and has been there since 2013-14. Initially it was envisaged to raise 12 new battalions, but has now been decreased to seven battalions. This has been in conjunction with the decision to increase the number of border outposts and staging camps along the LAC,” a home ministry official said.

The decision comes in the backdrop of clashes between Indian and Chinese forces in December last year in the Yangtze region of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, where several Indian troops were reported to have been injured.

Image courtesy of (Photo courtesy: newsonair.com)

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