The Indian Army has deployed additional men and machines at sensitive zones that are vulnerable to Chinese incursions along the Line of Actual Control in Arunachal Pradesh, sources in the defence ministry have said.

The development comes amid the recent alert by security agencies about “aggressive” patrolling by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army along the LAC in the eastern sector.

“The army has deployed additional forces at several sensitive zones where the Chinese army had transgressed into the Indian side of the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh in the past. This has been done following intelligence reports suggesting a sharp increase in patrolling activities by the PLA in the sector over the past five-six months,” a defence ministry official said.

The Chinese PLA is said to have reinforced its posts in large numbers and increased the scale of its training exercises by deploying military assets along the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang.

Of the 3,488km undemarcated LAC, 1,346km falls in the eastern sector. The Tawang sector alone has a 270km border with China. China claims 90,000sqkm of territory, practically the whole of Arunachal Pradesh.

Earlier this month Indian and Chinese troops had been locked in a “face-off” for a few hours at the Tawang sector after nearly 200 soldiers from the neighbouring country crossed over.

On October 19 the eastern army commander, Lt Gen. Manoj Pande, had said both India and China were trying to develop infrastructure closer to the LAC. Underlining that the presence of additional troops in Chinese operational depth areas was a matter of concern, he said India had also heightened its capacity.

In an attempt to guard against possible PLA transgressions, the Indian Army is deploying additional cameras and using satellite imagery to monitor the deployment of Chinese troops along the LAC in the eastern sector.

Transgressions and border skirmishes are not new along a large part of the disputed India-China frontier along Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

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

There has been “partial” disengagement from the Galwan Valley, the Pangong Lake and Gogra by creating a demilitarised “buffer zone” with the Chinese stepping back a few kilometres while still remaining within India-claimed lines.

The standoff at Hot Springs and the Depsang Plains continues.

India has all along been maintaining that the onus is on China to carry forward the process of disengagement and de-escalation at the friction points in eastern Ladakh.