PolicyDiplomacy
MEA says Chinese patrol deviations disturb LAC after ITBP chief confirms Arunachal face-offs
Randhir Jaiswal said India and China are using diplomatic and military channels to avoid miscalculation, as Congress demanded that the Prime Minister take Parliament into confidence.
Key points
- The MEA said the border is disturbed when Chinese forces deviate from established patrolling patterns.
- ITBP chief Shatrujeet Singh Kapur had said face-offs at several locations in Arunachal were continuing.
- Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge asked whether pre-May 2020 patrolling rights had been restored.
India’s foreign ministry said on Friday that the situation on the border with China “gets disturbed from time to time” when Chinese troops stray from agreed patrol patterns, a day after the head of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police said face-offs in Arunachal Pradesh were still going on.
“As we have noted in the past, the situation in the India-China border areas gets disturbed from time to time when Chinese forces deviate from established patrolling patterns,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at his weekly briefing in New Delhi.
He said both sides “continue to use existing diplomatic and military mechanisms to resolve outstanding issues and avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)”. The two countries, he added, “have also agreed to discuss ways to improve their understanding of the LAC in appropriate areas for better border management”. Peace and tranquillity in the border areas remained essential for wider ties, he said, and referred questions on the military details to the Defence Ministry.
What the ITBP chief said
ITBP Director General Shatrujeet Singh Kapur spoke to personnel at the force’s base in Alwar, Rajasthan, on Thursday, ahead of its 65th Raising Day on Saturday. “In the past few days, a situation arose where a face-off happened at several locations in Arunachal, and it continues,” he said.
Kapur, who retires on 31 October, said conventional warfare alone was no longer enough to counter China, and that drones could act as an equaliser against the People’s Liberation Army’s heavy investment. He said drone platoons had been raised in all border units.
He also spoke of plans for a full battalion of “Shaurya” commandos and a specialised high-altitude mountain fighting force. India and China were locked in a military standoff from May 2020 until October 2024.
Congress presses the government
The Congress seized on the remarks. “The ITBP DG’s confirmation of continuing PLA face-offs in Arunachal Pradesh is deeply alarming,” party president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote on X. “After Doklam and Galwan, is another serious confrontation unfolding?”
Kharge listed what he called at least 23 meetings and interactions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, along with rounds of Special Representatives’ talks, and asked: “What tangible results have these engagements delivered? Have India’s pre-May 2020 patrolling rights been fully restored?” He said the armed forces had the party’s complete confidence, but that “PM Modi must take Parliament and the Nation into confidence.”
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh accused the government of a “deafening silence” on the LAC. He pointed to corps commander talks in Arunachal Pradesh last month after a face-off in the Taksing area, China’s renaming of places in the state and its large dam project upstream. Arunachal Pradesh Congress president Bosiram Siram said people living along the border “are the first to notice developments in these areas” and that their concerns “must be taken seriously by the authorities”.
The wider picture
The friction comes weeks after President Xi visited New Delhi for the BRICS summit in September, when Modi stressed peace on the LAC. Modi and Xi had met in Kazan in October 2024, which opened the way for a thaw, and again at the SCO summit in Tianjin in August 2025. The government had not responded to the Congress demand for a statement by Friday night.