India and China agree to resume Army patrolling along LAC in eastern Ladakh

NEW DELHI: In a major breakthrough, India on Monday said that it has reached an agreement with China to resume patrolling along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh “leading to disengagement.”

The announcement came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia for the 16th BRICS Summit which will also be attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The breakthrough aimed at ending over four-year-long military standoff and also paves the way for a likely meeting between PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in the Russian city of Kazan this week.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, at a media briefing on Modi’s visit to Russia for the BRICS summit, said the agreement was finalised following negotiations by the two sides over the last several weeks and that it will lead to a resolution of the issues that had arisen in 2020.

Misri highlighted that this agreement marks a crucial phase in de-escalating the military presence in these regions. The process is expected to lead to a resolution of the border issues that have strained bilateral relations.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, meanwhile, said Indian and Chinese soldiers will be able to resume patrolling in the way they had been doing before the border face-off began and the disengagement process with China has been completed.

It is understood that the agreement will facilitate patrolling in the Depsang and Demchok areas, as there were major unresolved issues in these two regions.

The military tensions between India and China date back to their long-standing border dispute, which spans a 3,440-kilometre frontier in the Himalayas. The dispute has been punctuated by several military standoffs, including the deadly clash in the Galwan Valley in 2020, the skirmish near Naku La in Sikkim in January 2021, and the shots fired near Pangong Lake in September 2021, marking a rare violation of a 1996 agreement that prohibits the use of firearms along the LAC. In December 2022, soldiers from both sides clashed once again in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector, further highlighting the volatility of the border situation.

China’s objections to India’s infrastructure development projects along the LAC, particularly the construction of a strategic road in the Galwan River Valley connecting to an important airbase, have been central to the tensions. Beijing has viewed such developments as a threat to its territorial claims, while India has consistently asserted its right to improve infrastructure within its borders to strengthen its defence capabilities.

This latest agreement, however, signals a departure from the stalemate of the last few years and represents a move toward a more pragmatic approach to resolving the border dispute.

As India and China take the next steps to disengage along the LAC, the focus will now shift to ensuring that both sides adhere to the agreed-upon patrolling arrangements and that further progress is made in reducing tensions along one of the world’s most sensitive borders.

The ties between the two Asian giants nosedived significantly following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that marked the most grim military conflict between the two sides in decades.

The two sides disengaged from several friction points following a series of military and diplomatic talks in the last couple of years.

However, the talks hit hurdles in resolving the situation in Depsang and Demchok.

“Over the last several weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums,” the foreign secretary said.

“As a result of these discussions, an agreement has been reached on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” he said.

“We will be taking the next steps on this,” Misri added.

In an interactive session at the NDTV summit, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described the finalisation of the agreement as a “good development.”

“We reached an agreement on patrolling and with that the disengagement that we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020 and we can say with that the disengagement process with China has been completed,” he said.

“I think it is a good development; it is a positive development and I would say it is a product of very patient and very persevering diplomacy,” the minister said.

To a question, Jaishankar indicated that India will be able to carry out patrolling in Depsang and other areas.

“So what has happened is that we reached an understanding which will allow the patrolling which you spoke about Depsang, that’s not the only place,” he said.

“There are other places also. The understanding to my knowledge is that we will be able to do the patrolling which we were doing in 2020 (prior to the standoff),” he said. The external affairs minister said both sides have been holding negotiations to end the standoff since September 2020.

“On the one hand we had to obviously do the counter deployments, but side-by-side, we have been negotiating. We have been negotiating since September of 2020 when I met my Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow,” he said. “It has been a very patient process,” Jaishankar said, adding maybe it was more complicated “than it could have been and should have been.”

Jaishankar said there was peace and tranquillity along the LAC before 2020 and “hopefully we will be able to come back to that.”

“That was our major concern because we always said that if you disturb the peace and tranquillity, how do you expect the rest of the relationship to go forward,” he said.

India has been maintaining that its ties with China cannot be normal unless there is peace in the border areas.

In all negotiations since the standoff began, India has been pressing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to disengage from the Depsang and Demchok areas.

Last month, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks in the Russian city of St Petersburg with a focus on finding an early resolution to the row.