The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has intensified patrolling in sensitive areas across the contested border in Arunachal Pradesh after a lingering standoff with India began last year in the Ladakh sector, and has ramped up area-domination patrols for surveillance and orientation of newly inducted troops with a noticeable increase in visits by senior PLA officers to forward areas to supervise military activities, data accessed by Hindustan Times shows.
The sectors across which the Indian Army has detected PLA's increased operational tempo include Lungro La, Zimithang and Bum La areas of high historical significance in the context of Chinese operations in the eastern sector and counter measures have been taken to boost India's readiness to handle any contingency, Hindustan Times quoted un-named officers monitoring Chinese activities in the North-East as saying.
An activity matrix prepared by the Indian army to summarize the latest developments in the Lungro La sector showed PLA carried out 90 patrols in the area from January 2020 to October 2021 (hereinafter referred to as 2020-21) compared to about 40 between January 2018 and December 2019 (hereinafter referred to as 2018-19). This more than doubling of PLA patrols has been attributed by the army to the "current operational situation".
Along with the increased Chinese patrolling and area-domination activities, the Indian army's surveillance network has picked up a corresponding jump in visits by senior PLA officers to the Lungro La area north of Tawang up from 10 visits in the two years before the Ladakh border row erupted to 40 in 2020-21 (till September), according to Hindustan Times.
In the Indian army's assessment, the increase in frequency of visits by top PLA officers is "due to the importance of the sector, current operational situation and familiarization visits", says an analysis in the activity matrix.
Granular details of PLA activities have become known to the Indian Army because of heightened surveillance along LAC and in Chinese depth areas using satellites, long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, high-tech intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, superior network of radars and hi-tech night vision systems, Hindustan Times reported.
The Indian army took up forward positions in the Lungro La and Zimithang sectors in 1986-87 to dominate the Sumdorong Chu valley during a tense standoff with PLA there, according to HT.
PLA patrols in the Zimithang sector climbed from eight in 2018 and 2019 to 24 from January 2020 to September 2021; area-domination patrols rose from around 25 to 40, and visits by senior PLA officers went up from around 70 to 140, data from the second document shows.
Indian surveillance also picked up increased vehicular movement due to infrastructure-development activities and a large number of excavators and bulldozers to keep road axes open across the Lungro La, Zimithang and Bum La sectors, said another officer.
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