ITBP to Set Up New Posts on China Border

NEW DELHI: The government has allowed Indo-Tibetan Border Police to create 47 additional border outposts and 12 ‘staging camps’ to step up vigil along the border with China, officials familiar with the development told ET.

The home ministry nod will also lead to creation of a strategic sector headquarter on the front and boost manpower and infrastructure along the China border, they said.

The staging camps act as temporary border outposts (BOPs) for ITBP troops out on operations or patrols along the Himalayan frontier, and provide them rations, logistics and a place to stay.

ITBP had sought creation of staging camps to reduce the inter-BOP distance at the arduous border that experiences frequent blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, a home ministry official said.

At present, there are 180 BOPs along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with each outpost having about 100 soldiers, another official said.

The new BOPs will be temperature-controlled and will help forces to counter transgressions by the Chinese army, the officials said. The new battalions will also help the border guarding force to better rotate troops from forward locations to units in the mainland. Currently, the troops are rotated every three months.

According to the home ministry, construction of roads in border area along the LAC has witnessed a major boost in the past five years. Eleven roads of total length of 277.5 km have been constructed in the first phase. Another 45 roads having a length of 1033.52 km have been approved for the second phase, officials said. Construction of 18 important tracks in Arunachal Pradesh has also been approved, they said.

ITBP is primarily responsible to guard the 3,488 km-long LAC with China that runs along the new union territory of Ladakh and states of Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh. The total length of the border in Ladakh is 1,597 km, followed by 1,126 km in Arunachal Pradesh, 345 km in Uttarakhand, 220 km in Sikkim, and 200 km in Himachal.

The border is not fully demarcated and the process of clarifying and confirming the LAC is in progress, officials said.

Source: ET

Image Courtesy: Strategic Frontier