Rawat says Tuting issue resolved

India and China resolved the issues related to road-building in Tuting in Arunachal Pradesh, army chief Gen Bipin Rawat said here on Monday.

The two sides held a border personnel meeting (BPM) two days ago where the problems were sorted out, he said.

On December 28, Indian border guards saw Chinese civilians undertaking track alignment activity almost a kilometre inside the Indian territory in Tuting. While the civilians were not accompanied by Chinese soldiers, construction equipment were brought to the Indian side of the disputed border between the two countries.

"The Tuting incident has been resolved. We had a BPM two days ago," the army chief said on the sidelines of a seminar.

Officials in Delhi maintained that only civilians were involved in road-building work in Arunachal, but media reports originated from Itanagar contradicted the claim with villagers claiming Chinese soldiers were also involved in the work.

The villagers informed a local policeman, who in turn alerted the Indo Tibetan Border Police, which intercepted the Chinese team and seized two excavators near Bising village under Tuting subdivision.

The unauthorised road construction work in Arunachal Pradesh happened months after troops from India and China had a 72-day face-off at Doklam near India-China-Bhutan tri-junction on the eastern front.

Rawat said China substantially reduced its troops from the Doklam area, which is experiencing snowfall.

Earlier, addressing a seminar on the technologies that the army requires, Rawat said India would gradually move away from imports (in defence technology) because the time had come to ensure that the next war was fought with home-made solutions.

There is a huge requirement of modernisation of our armed forces in every field. The future wars will be fought in difficult terrains and circumstances and we have to be prepared for them," he said.