Chinese help for Pakistan railway worries India

[LahoreEstate]

NEW DELHI: Indian officials are worried that China is involved in building what they say is an illegal railway station in the no-man’s land along the Munabao-Khokhrapar train link, a news report said on Tuesday.

A separate report said the Indian Air Force was planning to beef up its recently upgraded base near the China border with an additional squad of Russian-built Sukhoi warplanes.

‘In what could be a latest and one of the biggest threats to India, Pakistan has hired a Chinese company to build an illegal railway station on no-man’s land near the Indian border at Barmer,’ CNN-IBN news channel said.

It claimed that the station being built by a Chinese company formed one of the many moves by Beijing to unsettle New Delhi.

When the railway station was built in 2006 to coincide with the reopening of the Munabao-Khokhrapar line, it was against international laws, since it was built 150 metres inside the demarcated no-man’s land, the report claimed.

‘Now Pakistan is all set to make the structure permanent and in a double whammy for India, Islamabad has invited a Chinese company to construct the station and that too on the zero line,’ it said. ‘Two weeks ago engineers from the Chinese company carried out a survey of the area.’

India’s Border Security Force DIG in Barmer H.K. Gujjar indicated the move would be opposed. ‘We’ll first take up the matter in the flag meeting. If that doesn’t work then we’ll stop them, if need be there’ll be deployment and we’ll take up the matter in a higher level meeting.’

India’s junior defence minister M.M. Pallam Raju was quoted as saying that New Delhi was prepared to counter Chinese advances in the neighbouring countries. ‘There is no shortfall in preparedness from our side in this regard.

‘Chinese influence is not just in Pakistan, but they are trying to develop a port in Sri Lanka and in Myanmar as well. And we are well aware of all these developments.

‘And we are taking steps that this Chinese influence does not pose a threat to our nation,’ Mr Raju said.

Meanwhile, a separate report said that after stationing the Sukhoi Su-30MIK war jets in Tezpur in Assam, the Indian Air Force will post another squadron of its frontline jets at the Chabua air base under its military policy to boost security along the border with China in the northeast.

On June 15, four Su-30MKIs will land in Tezpur for a symbolic induction, making the airbase the third in the country to house the combat jets.

‘It will be a symbolic induction as of now. Currently it’s not clear which of the Sukhoi bases — Pune or Bareilly — the aircraft belong to,’ a senior IAF official was quoted as saying.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn...ndia-za-13