Rajnath Singh visiting Uttarakhand to review India-China border situation

Home Minister Rajnath Singh will start his four-day visit to Uttarakhand on 25 September. He will also be visiting India-China border area.

Various transgressions by China's People's Liberation Army have been reported in the area in the past.

Rajnath is expected to visit Bara Hoti, which is manned by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. He will interact with the border security forces to understand the behavior of Chinese troops in the area.

In July this year, the Chinese troops had reportedly come into as much as one kilometre in Bara Hoti.

Last year, also in July, two soldiers from China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered 200 metres into the Barholi area of Uttarakhand.

The visit will be a significant one as it will be the first such by a senior minister in the NDA government after the resolution of the Doklam issue.

Doklam standoff started when on 16 June, 2017 Chinese troops with construction vehicles and road-building equipment began extending an existing road southward in Doklam, a territory which is claimed by both China as well as India's ally Bhutan. Indian troops objected to Chinese aggression.

Finally on August 28, both India and China announced that they had withdrawn all their troops from the face-off site in Doklam.

Singh will also visit ITBP border outposts at Rimkhim, Mana, and Auli during the four-day trip.

The 3,488 km-long India-China border stretches through Jammu and Kashmir (1,597 km), Himachal Pradesh (200 km), Uttarakhand (345 km), Sikkim (220 km) and Arunachal Pradesh (1,126 km).

The Sino-Indian border is not fully demarcated and the process of clarifying and confirming the Line of Actual Control is in progress.

-ANI