Reports noted that India will deploy eight squadrons of surface-to-air Akash missile in the North-East. The deployment is expected to cost over Rs. 6,100 crores by 2015, with the first squadron being expected to come up by 2011. The move is being seen as an effort to “counter China’s massive build-up of military infrastructure all along the unresolved 4057-km Line of Actual Control (LAC).”

The Indian Army is also raising two infantry mountain divisions and an artillery brigade in Arunanchal Pradesh. The infantry division, which will have 1260 officers and 35,011 soldiers, is expected to become operational in 2012. The IAF is raising two squadrons of Su-30 MKI aircraft, in Tezpur and Chabua in Assam.1

• 1. Rajar Pandit, ‘India to deploy Akash missiles in North-East to deter China’, The Economic Times, February 16, 2010