While referring to a Pentagon report that mentions a 100-home Chinese village in Arunachal Pradesh, foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on Thursday, 11 November, "China has undertaken construction activities in the past several years along the border areas, including in the areas that it has illegally occupied over decades. India has neither accepted such illegal occupation of our territory nor has it accepted the unjustified Chinese claims”, NDTV reported.
Bagchi added that the government will continue to convey this to Beijing as it has before.
Expert analysis of satellite images from 1 November 2020, according to NDTV, had confirmed in January this year, that the construction is approximately 4.5 kilometre within the Indian territory of the de facto border.
The annual United States Department of Defence report on military developments referred to the village while specifying the tension between India and China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The US Department of Defence was quoted as saying, "Sometime in 2020, the PRC (People's Republic of China) built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the PRC's Tibet Autonomous Region and India's Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC."
The report says, "These and other infrastructure development efforts along the India-China have been a source of consternation in the Indian government and media."
The US Department of Defence report further adds, "Despite the ongoing diplomatic and military dialogues to reduce border tensions, the PRC has continued taking incremental and tactical actions to press its claims at the LAC."
As part of a multi-billion dollar plan to ramp up infrastructure in the Tibet region, China has been building up habitations along the LAC in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
This also includes a plan to reportedly build more than 600 fully developed villages in the region, NDTV reported.
(With inputs from NDTV)
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