Mountain Corps Division
Russian news agency Sputnik said ever since newly-appointed Indian Army chief Bipin Rawat took charge, India has expedited work related to building movable modern bunkers along the border shared with China. Sputnik reported in January this year that the Indian Army was using hollow block structures for building hundreds of bunkers near Sikkim. According to Sputnik:
"India's refusal to take part in One Belt, One Road summit organized by China did not go down well with China. Since then, Beijing has issued a warning over some of the activities conducted by India along the border especially in the north-east region. China opposed the infrastructure development issue several times.
"The construction of bunkers has been a flashpoint in Sino-India ties. These bunkers can be easily transported to the Himalayan terrain after getting built in the plains of Assam and Sikkim. The step is an indication of India's keenness to raise a 90,000-strong Mountain Corps for strengthening the deployment along the 4,057-km of Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China."
Mountain Corps Division
It may be recalled Sputnik report in May last that India is raising a second division of Mountain Strike Corps to strengthen its capabilities against neighboring China. The first division is stationed in Panagarh in West Bengal, the eastern Indian state.
The second division of Mountain Strike Corps, which will be headquartered in Pathankot, will be raised to counter China to form a credible deterrence against the Chinese army.
The new 17 Mountain Strike Corps will have a strength of around 90,000 soldiers and it will take almost three years to become fully operational. It will consist of two new high-altitude infantry divisions and it will be spread from Arunachal Pradesh to Ladakh along the border with China.
"As far as the Strike Corps is concerned, we already have three Strike Corps against Pakistan and these are for plains that is basically one, two and twenty-one Corps. However, we were not having the Strike Corps in use against Chinese in mountains and hence a 17 Strike Corps for mountains have been raised and it will be fully deployed along the China border. So far we only have a defensive mechanism against the China, however with the Strike Corps coming and being raised, we will also have an offensive mechanism," Major General (Rtd) AK Siwach, a former head of the Territorial Army, told Sputnik.
"As far as the Chinese are concerned, the threat is real" We should be well-prepared against any contingency," Major General Siwach added.
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