The Centre has instructed central intelligence agencies to increase personnel deployment along the China frontier spanning from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh.

The directive aims to monitor the aggressive activities of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army amidst frequent border skirmishes and transgressions, sources in the home ministry said on Monday.

“During a recent security review meeting, the central security agencies have been asked to deploy more intelligence officials to help the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) keep a close watch on the PLA’s activities along the Line of Actual Control (LAC),” a Union home ministry official told The Telegraph.

“The inputs from central agencies will help the ITBP in curbing any transgression bid by the Chinese troops who often infiltrate into our side along the disputed LAC,”
he said.

The intelligence officials will work in tandem with the troops of the Indian Army and the ITBP, along with agencies such as the National Technical Research Organisation, Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing to keep tabs on any suspicious activities of the PLA.

Intelligence reports had earlier suggested that the PLA had made huge frontline formations in several sensitive zones and were continuously ramping up infrastructure along the LAC from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh.

The ITBP, which guards the 3,488km-long China frontier that runs along Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, is the first line of defence, while the army is stationed behind it.

The Indian and Chinese armies have been locked in a border standoff in eastern Ladakh since May 2020. The PLA is estimated to have taken over nearly 1,000sqkm of India-claimed territory in
the region.

Sources said the Chinese army had also set up additional military camps along the LAC in the Tawang sector in Arunachal Pradesh and strengthened its positions in the region.

Twelve of Arunachal Pradesh’s 25 districts share a 1,126km border with China.

Intelligence reports have sounded an alert on how the PLA has been increasingly moving deeper into India-claimed territory.

Amid the ongoing military standoff in Ladakh, the PLA had attempted incursions in Arunachal Pradesh’s Yangtze in the Tawang sector in December 2022, leading to a clash between the troops of the two countries that had left around 20 Indian soldiers injured. The clash occurred after over 500 Chinese troops crossed the LAC and started vandalising Indian military posts.

At that time, the Centre had said the Chinese troops had tried to “transgress” the LAC and “unilaterally change the status quo” at Yangtze, but the Indian Army had foiled their attempt.

In August last year, Beijing had released the 2023 edition of its “standard map” showing Arunachal Pradesh, the disputed South China Sea and the Aksai Chin region occupied by it in the 1962 war as Chinese territory. India had lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels
against the map.