'India will not allow any unilateral attempt by China to alter LAC'

new delhi: India will not allow any unilateral attempt by China to change the status quo or alter the Line of Actual Control (LAC), External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, while asserting that through an enormous logistical effort, the country had countered the Chinese in eastern Ladakh.

Talking about the eastern Ladakh border row, Jaishankar said China, in violation of the 1993 and 1996 agreements not to mass troops on the LAC, chose to do so, and added that its attempt was obviously to unilaterally change the LAC.

"Even though we were in the midst of COVID-19 at that time, through an enormous logistical effort, which I think sometimes has not been adequately recognised by people, by analysts, even in our politics in this country, we were actually able to counter them at the LAC," Jaishankar said at a town hall organised by CNN-News18.

He said some people have a simplistic idea of the border and one does not typically deploy at the patrolling point and that troops are in depth areas. "What has happened as a result of this is because they (China) had forward deployments which were new and we counter-deployed, we also had forward deployments. You ended up with a very sort of intricate mix...which was very dangerous because they were too proximate, the rules of engagement were not being observed and then, exactly what we apprehended happened at Galwan two years ago. It became violent and there were casualties," Jaishankar said. "Since then, we have had a situation where we negotiate the friction points. When you say have you yielded results, many of those friction points have been resolved," he said.

"There are areas where they pulled back, we pulled back. Remember, both of us are very much in advance of what our pre-April positions were. Has it all been done? No. Have we made substantial solutions? Actually, yes," Jaishankar said.

"It is very patient work, but we are very clear on one point, which is, we will not allow any unilateral attempt by China to change the status quo or alter the LAC," he said.