NEW DELHI: Recent reports claim that China has constructed at least 3 villages close to Arunachal Pradesh. Satellite images showed that the villages were constructed around 5 kilometres from the Bum La pass which lies close to the tri-junction between India, China and Bhutan in western Arunachal Pradesh.

Several villages have come up in the tri-junction and the move follows the upgrading and construction of Chinese military facilities, including heliports and missile bases, all along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the aftermath of the 2017 standoff at Doklam.

Imagery shared by an open-source intelligence analyst on Sunday showed what appeared to be five new border villages built near Bum La, the border pass located between Cona county in Tibet Autonomous Region and Tawang district in Arunachal Pradesh.

It must be noted that the India-China border dispute covers the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control, the de-facto border between the two countries. While China claims that Arunachal Pradesh is a part of south Tibet, India has strongly firmly rejected the claim.