Major General-ranked officers of Indian and Chinese armies meet in eastern Ladakh

Major General ranked officers of the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army held two separate meetings in eastern Ladakh on Friday in an attempt to break the impasse on restoring normalcy at the remaining friction points near the Line of Actual Control – the disputed boundary between the two countries.

“Armies of India and China hold Major General-level talks at DBO (Daulat Beg Oldie) and Chushul to resolve the ongoing stand-off in eastern Ladakh. The Indian side was represented at the two locations by Maj Gen PK Mishra and Maj Gen Hariharan. The talks are being held to resolve the issues at Depsang Plains and CNN Junction,” ANI reported, quoting Defence sources.

The Defence Ministry and the Indian Army did not officially confirm the news till the time of filing this report.

But such a plan was under work as one of the confidence-building measures as the 19th round of senior military commanders meeting between the two armies earlier this week had failed to yield a breakthrough.

After the Lt Gen rank officers meeting that went on for 10 hours on Monday, New Delhi and Beijing issued a joint statement in which they said that both sides agreed to resolve “the remaining issues in an expeditious manner and maintain the momentum of dialogue and negotiations through military and diplomatic channels”.

“In the interim, the two sides agreed to maintain the peace and tranquility on the ground in the border areas."

The senior military commanders returned to the table of negotiation after four months, with New Delhi and Beijing discussing the possibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping having a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the BRICS summit, which would be hosted by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Johannesburg from August 22 to 24.

Modi is also expecting to host Xi in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 for the G20 summit that he will chair.

After three years of face-off between Indian and Chinese armies at various locations near the LAC, the bilateral relationship between the two neighbours has taken a sharp dip.

While the two armies had withdrawn some troops from flashpoints like Galwan Valley, the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra Post and Hot Springs, other confrontation areas such as Depsang and Demchok (Charding Ninglung Nullah or CNN track junction) remained sore points because of which the stand-off could not be resolved completely so far.