CALCUTTA, 5 January 2005 — India will not reduce the number of troops deployed at the strategic Nathu La Pass on the country’s border with China, the newly-appointed general officer commanding in chief (GOC-in-C) of the army’s Eastern Command said yesterday.
Addressing newsmen in Calcutta’s Fort William, headquarters of the Eastern Command, Lt. Gen. Arvind Sharma said that “any talk of troop reduction at this stage is premature although preparations are under way to reopen the Nathu La route for trade between India and China”.
Questioned about India’s internal security scenario, Sharma said that links between Nepal’s Maoists and Kamtapur Liberation Organization - which is fighting for a separate tribal homeland in northern Bengal - is posing a major threat.
Significantly, he also made a forceful plea for retention of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, claiming that it is virtually impossible to launch a successful anti-insurgency operation unless AFSPA is in force. “The Act is absolutely essential for India’s integrity”, Sharma said emphatically, shrugging off queries about the progress of the review of the controversial Act recently ordered by the federal government in the wake of mass protests in Manipur.
Asked about human rights violations by the army in India’s troubled northeast, he clarified: “We have an efficient and foolproof mechanism for dealing with violations. Unlike the civil judicial process, ours is faster and punishment is meted out swiftly”.
The new GOC-in-C explained that there is no question of reducing troops at Nathu La because the India-China border is yet to be demarcated.
“Infrastructure is being built at Nathu La to facilitate cross-border trade. But it is too early to even think of reducing troops, particularly because the India-China border is still not demarcated”, said Sharma.
India and China fought a brief but bitter border war in 1962 that left their relations in shreds. But in recent years they have played down their territorial disputes to focus on improving commercial and other ties. The nuclear armed neighbors have still not demarcated a border, with the post-conflict Line of Control identifying their respective territories.
But in June 2003, India and China signed a landmark agreement during former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Beijing visit to revive cross-border trade at the 14,500-foot (4,400-meter) Nathu La pass in the state of Sikkim, closed since the 1962 war. Trade, however, is yet to resume.
Within months of Vajpayee’s visit, a Foreign Ministry official said China had corrected its official maps to include Sikkim as part of India.
But even as trade and commercial ties are rapidly improving, the festering border dispute still casts a shadow on bilateral relations between the world’s two most populous nations.
