Tit for tat: IAF starts landing facility 100 km from China border

The opening of the Advance Landing Ground (ALG) for IAF craft at Pasighat in Arunachal on Friday and Union Home Minister Kiren Rijiju using to occasion point out “the Chinese army transgressing into Arunachal Pradesh on two occasions recently,” are clear indications that Centre is going to be “equally firm in dealing with the other neighbour.”  

For the first time since 1962, aircraft movement was witnessed in the area as on Friday morning Indian Air Force Sukhoi-30 fighter jets flying in formation landed at ALG in Pasighat. This station is just 100 kilometres inside the India-China border. The new station is about 180 kilometres from the state Capital of Itanagar.

 The opening of the ALG so close to the border is certain to invite reaction from Beijing, which had protested deploying around 100 T-72 battle tanks in Ladakh, close to the disputed border with China a few weeks back. “We are not challenging or competing with any other country by strengthening our border infrastructure. We will have to build a robust infrastructure to strengthen our defence and whatever we did is because India is an emerging power with capability. So IAF should have operational bases in all the bordering states,” Rijiju told media persons in Pasighat when pointed to Chinese resentment to the move.

The ALG was inaugurated by Rijiju in the presence of Air Marshal C Hari Kumar, chief of the Shillong-based Eastern Air Command. “The touchdown by a frontline fighter jet of the IAF at the ALF is a historic first in Arunachal Pradesh, which has several ALGs at varying altitudes,” Air Marshal Kumar said. Two more ALGs at Tuting and Tawang are expected to be ready by the year-end. Four other ALGs in the state at Mechuka, Ziro, Along and Walong were inaugurated between March and May this year.