India to not lower guard till China pulls back troops from all face-off points

India will not lower its guard along its disputed boundary with China till the communist country’s People’s Liberation Army will withdraw front-line troops from all the face-off points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.

Though the two sides have started withdrawing troops from the northern and the southern banks of the Pangong Tso (lake), the military stand-off India and China have been engaged in for the past 10 months would not be over until the disengagement process would be completed in all the face-off points along the de facto boundary between the two nations.

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“It might take some time before we could say that it was really behind us,” a source aware of New Delhi’s engagement with Beijing to resolve the stand-off told the DH on Wednesday. “Till then, we have to maintain a high level of preparedness for any eventuality.”

The disengagement of troops by the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA on the two banks of Pangong Tso would be followed by verification by the two sides. Similar processes would be followed for withdrawal of soldiers by both sides in other areas along the LAC, like Depsang Y and Gogra Post, in the coming days, said the source.

New Delhi has made it clear to Beijing that peace and tranquillity could be restored in India-China border areas only when the Chinese PLA would withdraw troops both from the forward positions along the LAC as well as from the “depth areas”.

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New Delhi has been alleging that the stand-off started as China in late April and early May 2019 sought to change the status quo in the border areas by deploying a large number of troops along the LAC. China thus violated the 1993 and 1996 agreement it had inked with India. The agreements required both sides to refrain from amassing large numbers of troops in the border areas, to strictly abide by and respect the LAC and to avoid taking any unilateral action to alter it.

“We have been maintaining during negotiations that China must respect the agreements it had signed with India,” said another source.

“(The) Government will continue discussions with the Chinese side to achieve the objective of disengagement from all friction points and restoration of peace and tranquillity in the India-China Border Areas at an early date,” V Muraleedharan, Minister of State for External Affairs, informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply to a question on Wednesday.

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Though India and China had agreed upon a roadmap for a mutual withdrawal of front-line troops from the face-off scenes along the LAC in early July, the process had come to a halt within a fortnight, with the Chinese PLA declining to completely pull back soldiers from several “points of friction” along the LAC. It was only after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishanakar had separate meetings with their counterparts in the Chinese Government in Moscow in September 2019, the diplomats and the senior military commanders restarted talks to end the impasse.

The Chinese PLA late last year proposed a moratorium on patrolling between Finger 3 and Finger 8 on the northern bank of Pangong Tso. The Indian Army had reservations about it.

The relations between New Delhi and Beijing hit a new low over the 10-month-long stand-off, particularly after the violent clash in Galwan Valley on June 15. The Indian Army lost 20 of its soldiers in the clash. The PLA too suffered casualties, but never made public the number of its soldiers, who were injured or killed in the clash.