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Government will raise 7 new battalions and set up an operational base along LAC for ITBP.
Amid continuing faceoff with China in some areas, India may deploy an additional 9,400 troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the eastern front to counter a belligerent Dragon.
The Modi government has announced the raising of seven new battalions of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) – the security agency that guards the LAC – and the establishment of an operational base for the force with 9,400 personnel.
The proposal was approved in a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters after the Cabinet meeting, Union minister Anurag Thakur said that the operational base will be set up along the LAC, which will accommodate 9400 personnel.
“The operational base will supervise the new ITBP battalions and provide logistical support,” said Thakur, the minister for information.
According to the government, ITBP troops patrol the border between the Karakoram Pass in Ladakh and Jachep La in Arunachal Pradesh which falls under their general area of operations (AoR).
As per government figures, ITBP had 60 battalions as of September 2021. A specialized mounting force, ITBP is primarily tasked with guarding the 3,488-km India-China border.
With a budgetary allocation of ₹1,800 crores, the ITBP will raise the new battalions and complete the establishment of the sector headquarter by 2025.
India and China have been locked in a prolonged military faceoff since May 2020. Tension escalated after a deadly clash between Indian Army troops and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in June of that year, resulting in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops.
Both nations responded by deploying a huge number of troops and building military infrastructure on their side of the LAC. While the situation in most of the area has been resolved after dozens of rounds of high-level military talks, Indian and Chinese troops are still deployed dangerously close in some areas.
A paramilitary force, ITBP troops operate in some of the most challenging and inhospitable terrain in the world, including the high-altitude regions of the Himalayas.
Apart from its primary responsibility, the ITBP is also deployed in a range of other activities like disaster response and relief, law enforcement, and counter-insurgency operations.
