A senior Indian government official said that Indian border guards near the China-India border line have been authorized to fire in self-defense if their security is threatened.
An unnamed senior official was quoted by several Indian media outlets as saying in a joint media interview on Thursday (September 24, 2020) that the Chinese strategy of overwhelming Indian soldiers with numbers will not be tolerated. He was referring to the June 15, 2020, attack on Indian soldiers at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh by Chinese troops armed with iron rods, which resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers.
Tensions along the India-China border have been high for the past several months, and on September 7, gunfire was heard near Pangong Tso on the western sector of the border, with Beijing and New Delhi accusing each other of threatening to fire in the air.
Both countries also have tens of thousands of troops in the conflict zone, backed by artillery, tanks, and fighter jets.
This week, India and China held their sixth round of commander-level talks, in which both sides promised not to send additional troops to the front lines. But both sides have not withdrawn the new forces that have been deployed near the border in recent months.
Beijing continues to shift the blame for border tensions to India. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on September 17: “The priority is for the Indian side to immediately correct its mistake, disengage on the ground as soon as possible, and take concrete actions to promote the easing and cooling of the border situation.”
The senior Indian government official said that India’s position is that since you, China, have broken the status quo and are the first to send troops across the Line of Actual Control, then you must first withdraw your troops. He added that as the weather gets colder, it looks like border guards on both sides will spend the winter under the standoff and on the plateau.
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