Army chief General Dalbir Suhag reviews LAC situation

NEW DELHI: Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag visited forward areas in Uttarakhand along the line of actual control ( LAC) with China on Wednesday to review operational preparedness and infrastructure development in the region.

"The chief visited forward areas like Mana Pass, Harsil and the like in the crucial central sector of the LAC to take stock of the situation. Formation commanders also gave a detailed briefing to him on the operational and administrative preparedness," said an official.

"General Suhag expressed satisfaction with the efforts being made to ensure capability enhancement and operational effectiveness to meet all contemporary and emerging challenges in the forward areas," he added.

While the 778-km line of control (LoC) with Pakistan remains volatile with heavy exchanges of fire, especially after Indian forces conducted 'surgical strikes' on terror launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on September 29, not a single shot has been fired along the unresolved 4,057-km LAC for decades.

There has also been a slight decline in troop face-offs between India and China after the two inked the border defence cooperation agreement in October 2013. But "transgressions" across the LAC -western (Ladakh), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal) -continue unabated with over 200 such incidents already being recorded this year.

India is slowly cranking up its conventional military deterrence against China along the land border with deployment of additional Sukhoi-30MKI fighters, spy drones and missiles in the northeast, as reported by TOI earlier.