Troops of India and China are locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff near Bishing in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Siang district for close to a week now, sources in the security establishment have confirmed to newspaper The New Indian Express.
The standoff began after Indian troops involving the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Indian Army were informed by local villagers that a Chinese road-building team had entered India with bulldozers.
China has said it had “never acknowledged” the existence of Arunachal Pradesh as it kept mum over a media report that its troops intruded into the Indian side of the border in the frontier state.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang’s response came after a media report said that Chinese troops intruded into the Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh for about 200 meters close to a village in upper Siang district.
“First of all on the border issue our position is clear and consistent. We never acknowledged the existence of so called Arunachal Pradesh,” Geng told a media briefing.
“For the specific situation you mentioned, I am not aware of it,” Geng said.
China claims Arunachal Pradesh is part of South Tibet. The India-China border dispute covered 3,488 km along the Line of Actual Control.
