Newly-appointed Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, termed the intrusion by Chinese troops across the line of Control (loC) as a ‘small issue’ when compared to lack of infrastructure in India’s border areas.
Addressing media persons, soon after he landed in the State after becoming Defence Minister, Parrikar said that the larger issue was that of creating infrastructure along the border regions to back the Army up.
“…What you call as intrusion or crossing the line of Control, imaginary line of control, happens many times in many sectors, but is it taken care on the same day or within a couple of days. Except one or two incidents there is no serious incident,” Parrikar said.
He said he “could not specifically reply” to a question on whether the PlA has set up camps within Indian territory.“I can’t answer that specifically... There are small breaches of what you call the loC, that are not to be taken too seriously, overall the problem is being tackled in a different way. I’ll not discuss about individual crossings... I think it is a major problem from the media angle,” the former Goa Chief Minister said.
Parrikar said that the real problem along the loC was of a “different type”.“The real problem is we should establish proper infrastructural backup in those areas. I will not tell you what are the lackings (is lacking), because that is never discussed, but what is required is fill up the gap, whatever it is in the next one or two years, so that we create capability,” he said.
“The intrusion you are talking about is a very small issue. It happens when the two army vehicles come opposite each other. Then they do banner drills. That happens almost every second or third day. Per say that incident is not very important…” Parrikar said.