New Delhi, September 16: The government and Air Force on Tuesday insisted that there had been no incursion by Chinese nor any firing incident on Sikkim border in which two ITBP jawans were injured as claimed by a media report.
The Prime Minister’s Office also denied that National Security Adviser M K Narayanan had convened a high-level meeting on Thursday to discuss Chinese incursions.
“A media report about two ITBP jawans having been injured due to firing (by China) from across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has come to notice. The report is factually incorrect,” External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said in a statement here.
The report had claimed that the ITBP jawans were injured when Chinese troops fired at them in Kerang in northern Sikkim about a fortnight ago.
ITBP too denied the occurrence of any incident. “The reported incident that two jawans of ITBP were injured by bullets fired from the Chinese side was false…No such incident of firing has taken place in north Sikkim on India–China border and no member of ITBP has been injured,” an ITBP statement said.
Firm up stand against China, Arunachal tells New Delhi
Another media report suggested that two Chinese fighters had transgressed into Indian airspace last month, which was dismissed by IAF as “far-fetched and imaginative”.
IAF spokesperson Wing Commander T K Singha said there had been no unscheduled flight inside Indian air space. “We will react if there is any unscheduled flight noticed and picked up on our radars,” he said.
NSA convenes meet of China Study Group
Apparently concerned over repeated incursions by Chinese troops, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan has convened a meeting of top officials including Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar and Secretaries of Defence, Home and Foreign Ministries.
The meeting of the China Study Group has been called to take stock of the situation along the Sino-India border, official sources said here tonight.
Besides Chandrasekhar, the meeting will be attended by Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar, Home Secretary G K Pillai, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao.
Top officials of the three armed forces and the Intelligence Bureau will also attend the meeting.
The meeting comes in the wake of recent reports of incursions by the Chinese army in Ladakh, including air dropping of expired food canes, painting of rocks red among others.
–Agencies