India's Border Police Chief Confirms Ongoing Face-offs with Chinese Troops in Arunachal Pradesh
India's paramilitary border force chief has disclosed that Indian and Chinese troops remain locked in multiple continuing confrontations in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, complicating a fragile diplomatic thaw between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Shatrujeet Kapur, director-general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), revealed at a felicitation ceremony for his force's personnel that face-offs with Chinese troops along the Himalayan frontier in Arunachal Pradesh "still continue" at multiple locations. His remarks came nearly four months after local civil society groups in the remote Upper Subansiri region told Al Jazeera that Chinese forces were increasingly encroaching on Indian territory and blocking Indian troops from patrolling points.
The disclosures arrive roughly six years after at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat with Chinese forces in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh in June 2020 — a clash in which China later acknowledged four of its own troops died. Kapur, who is due to retire this week, also warned that China's frontier military capabilities have advanced and that Indian forces may not be able to meet a similar challenge through traditional methods.
The tensions sit awkwardly alongside recent diplomacy: Chinese President Xi Jinping visited New Delhi last month — his first trip to India in seven years — for the BRICS summit, where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India's foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal responded to Kapur's remarks by saying border stability "gets disturbed from time to time when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns," stopping short of addressing the ongoing face-offs directly.
Analysts warn the situation poses a political challenge to Modi's strongman image on national security. The 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) border between the two countries has never been formally demarcated, and diplomatic meetings — including the 36th Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination held on August 6 and a commander-level meeting in September — have so far failed to eliminate the friction.
