NEW DELHI: India continues maritime combat capabilities with majortheatre-level operational readiness exercises on both the western andeastern seaboards for the first time this year.

India and China, of course, are engaged in some stepped-up shadow-boxingalong the Line of Actual Control (LAC) after the rival troops disengagedfrom 73-day eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation at Doklam near theSikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction six months ago. “Border transgressions” bythe People’s Liberation Army (PLA), for instance, jumped to as many as 426last year as compared to 273 in 2016.

This muscle-flexing rivalry is also underway in the IOR, though both sidesdo not want the strategic competition to escalate into conflict on the highseas, much like the 4,057-km long land border in the Himalayan region.

Defence sources on Tuesday said a Chinese flotilla of a destroyer, frigate,amphibious transport ship and replenishment tanker did enter the easternIOR through the Sunda Strait (Indonesia) around February 10, afterconducting some drills in the South China Sea, but it went back through theLombok Strait after some days.

Rejecting “alarmist” reports of China indulging in gunboat diplomacy amidthe constitutional crisis in Maldives, the sources said the flotilla waswell over 3,500-km away from the tiny island country in the Arabian Sea.

“Indian satellites, warships and long-range maritime surveillance aircraftlike P-8I kept close tabs on the Chinese flotilla, which was ininternational waters towards Australia,” said a source. Navy spokespersonCaptain D K Sharma said, “India has a very robust surveillance system toensure clear and transparent maritime domain awareness (MDA) in the entireIOR.”