New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah said Tuesday that no one could capture even an inch of India’s land as long as the Narendra Modi government was in power.
Shah was referring to the India-China face-off in Arunachal Pradesh last Friday, when over 200 Chinese troops clashed with Indian soldiers in the tense Yangtse area, leading to several injuries on both sides.
Sources in the defence establishment said the soldiers were armed with crude weapons and had reached the Indian perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), about 35 km from Tawang.
The Chinese were challenged by a group of about 50 Indian soldiers, who stopped the PLA advance in an area that saw a similar clash in October 2021.
Within half an hour, the Indian back-up team arrived on the spot, following which a clash took place. The clash started off with stone pelting before troops from both sides engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
On Tuesday, Shah lauded the valour shown by the Indian Army, who he said had pushed back the intruders in a few hours.
The Opposition loudly protested the border clashes in Parliament Tuesday which led to an adjournment in the Lok Sabha.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in a statement before the House, said the Chinese side has been asked to refrain from such actions and to maintain peace and tranquility along the border.
Meanwhile, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Tuesday that the situation at the India-China border was “generally stable”.
News agency ANI reported that before Friday’s clash, Chinese drones had moved aggressively towards Indian positions on the LAC, forcing the Air Force to scramble their fighter jets on more than two occasions.
China has behaved belligerently in Yangtse in the vicinity of the Holydip and Parikrama areas.
Defence sources told ANI: “In the last few weeks, there have been two to three occasions when our fighter jets had to be scrambled to tackle the Chinese drones moving towards our positions on the LAC.
The Indian Air force has a strong presence in the northeast with squadrons of Su-30 fighter jets deployed in multiple locations, including in Tezpur and Chhabua in Assam.
Also read: PLA tried to intrude, change status quo in Arunachal, our troops sent them back, says Rajnath