The Indian government on Monday rejected claims that it was in the process of sending reinforcements to 19 "sensitive spots" along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) due to fear of “incursion” by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during summer months".
A report in Indian media claimed that the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has submitted a report to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) claiming that Chinese troops were likely to transgress Indian territory at different places from Ladakh in the western section of the Sino-India border to Arunachal Pradesh in eastern stretch of the 3,488-kilometre-long frontier.
The ITBP is an agency under India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and tasked with jointly guarding the Sino-India border with the Indian Armed Forces.
An MHA spokesperson described the claim as "misleading, malicious and ill-motivated" as it involved the "sensitive issue of national security".
“The ITBP hasn’t submitted any such internal report to the MHA,” the spokesperson said.
The report comes against the backdrop of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for the need to resolve the Ladakh standoff in an interview published by Newsweek last week.
"It is my belief that we need to urgently address the prolonged situation on our borders so that the abnormality in our bilateral interactions can be put behind us," Modi said during an interview.
The remarks by the Indian leader drew a reaction from the Chinese foreign ministry, which highlighted that “positive progress” had been made in resolving the nearly four year long military standoff in the eastern Ladakh region.
“China believes that a sound and stable relationship is in the interest of both China and India. We hope that India will work with China to place the boundary question appropriately in bilateral relations and manage it properly, and put the relationship on a sound and steady track,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said during a regular briefing in Beijing last week.