India has pulled off the seemingly difficult task of getting a stubborn China to return to the patrolling agreements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh that was in place before the Galwan clashes in April 2020. Given that China had maintained a dogged stance of not agreeing to India’s status quo demand for four years makes the victory sweeter — not only diplomatically but militarily as well.
The disengagement agreement came after 17 rounds of working mechanism meetings and 21 rounds of military dialogue. “What it will entail is that in the pending areas under discussion, patrolling and grazing activities, wherever applicable, will revert to the situation as it existed in 2020,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said, echoing External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s remarks at a media event.
The agreement also set the stage for the first bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Russia since the border standoff brought ties close to breaking point.
The new agreement will facilitate Indian troops to resume patrolling up to their old patrolling points in Depsang and Demchok — the two major friction areas that were left to be sorted between the two nations. Disputes have already been settled in Gogra-Hot Springs, Pangong Lake, and Galwan Valley, the site of a fierce hand-to-hand combat between the two troops that resulted in fatalities on both sides.
The Depsang plains, located in the north of Ladakh, and Demchok in the south accounted for the majority of the disputed area. The significance could be gauged from the fact China was reluctant to discuss the two regions until about a year ago.
The Depsang Plains, in particular, hold huge military significance. Located just 30 km from the significant Daulat Beg Oldie post near the Karakoram Pass, the region has a flat surface in contrast to the mountainous terrain of the region.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Russia today for the first bilateral meeting since 2019. Ties between India and China had taken a severe hit since the military stand-off in Ladakh as a result of Beijing’s “unilateral” actions of violating the Line of Actual Control, the de-facto boundary between the two countries.
The bilateral talks between PM Modi and Xi Jinping took place on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in the city of Kazan in Russia. It happened less than 72 hours after a breakthrough in talks – both at diplomatic and military levels – ensuring that the status quo returns to what it was before May 2020, when the stand off in Ladakh began with the military clash in Galwan.
The breakthrough in the patrolling arrangement comes four years after the Galwan Valley clash and signals a move towards de-escalation in a region where both countries stationed tens of thousands of troops.
The meeting underscored the upturn in the India-China relation following a consensus on patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control that had faced multiple hiccups over the last few years.
Caution is required, says Indian Army Chief
In New Delhi, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi, in first remarks after the patrolling pact, underlined the need for the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA to first “restore trust” in each other by not “creeping” into the buffer zones, “go back to the status quo of April 2020” — before the Chinese incursions in eastern Ladakh led to a military standoff — and then look at “disengagement, de-escalation, normal management” of the LAC.
At a media briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, “Over a recent period of time, China and India have kept close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues related to the China-India border.”
Asked for a response to the Indian announcement about reaching an agreement to end the over four-year long military standoff, Lin said, the two sides have reached a resolution on the “relevant matters”. He said China will work with India to implement it but declined to provide details.
