NEW DELHI: Despite having implicitly accepted Sikkim to be a part of India earlier, China continues to undertake “incursions” across the LAC into the tiny north-eastern state.
The latest “incursion” by Chinese troops took place on Monday, with a vehicle-mounted patrol crossing almost one km into Indian territory in Sikkim’s northernmost tip known as the “finger area”, to which Beijing is now laying claim despite New Delhi’s position that the Sikkim border question is “settled”.
As first reported by TOI in April, China has stepped up “incursions” across the 206-km border between Sikkim and Tibet since the beginning of this year, with around 65 such episodes recorded since January now.
India is used to incursions by Chinese troops across the 4,057-km LAC in all the three sectors — western (Ladakh), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal) — in a bid to strengthen China’s claim over disputed areas and ensure New Delhi does not change its Tibet policy.
