India, China end standoff in Doklam

The 72-day long military standoff between India and China came to an end on Monday with both sides withdrawing troops from the Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan.

Neither New Delhi, nor Beijing divulged the details of the understanding they arrived at to end the standoff. Sources, however, said that the Indian Army had withdrawn its soldiers after Chinese People's Liberation Army had agreed to suspend the construction of a road in Doklam Plateau for now.

Sources in New Delhi also said that the Chinese PLA had pulled out its troops from the scene after the withdrawal of the Indian Army soldiers.

The standoff ended just about a week before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to Xiamen in south-eastern China to attend the BRICS (a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit from September 3 to 5. He is likely to have a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit.

The Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi announced around noon on Monday that India and China had agreed on "expeditious disengagement" of border personnel at the Doklam Plateau on the basis of "diplomatic communication" between the two nations. It also said that New Delhi had been able to express its "views" and convey its "concerns and interests" to Beijing over the recent weeks.

After the MEA issued the statement in New Delhi, Beijing confirmed withdrawal of India Army soldiers from Doklam, but declined to clarify if Chinese PLA had also pulled out troops from the scene.

"On the afternoon on August 28 (Monday), India has pulled back all the trespassing personnel, equipment to the Indian side of the boundary," Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese government, was quoted by PTI in a report from Beijing. "Chinese personnel on the ground have verified this." She indicated that the Chinese PLA soldiers would keep on conducting patrolling in the area.

By evening, New Delhi, however, clarified that withdrawal of border personnel of both India and China had almost completed.

Beijing, however, did not budge from its stand that Doklam Plateau was an integral part of China and it had no dispute over the area with Bhutan. "The Chinese side will continue to exercise its sovereignty, uphold territorial integrity in accordance with the historical conventions," Hua said in Beijing.

The standoff

The standoff started on June 18 when soldiers from Indian Army's forward post at Doka La in Sikkim went to the Doklam Plateau to stop personnel of the Chinese PLA from constructing a road.

The PLA soldiers had started building the road along the disputed border between Bhutan and China on June 16, brushing aside protests from the Royal Bhutanese Army personnel deployed nearby. The intervention by Indian Army soldiers two days later resulted in the standoff, which went on for weeks.

New Delhi has been arguing that the Indian Army had to intervene as the road the Chinese PLA had been building would have a serious security implication for India and would have unilaterally changed the status quo on India-China-Bhutan tri-junction boundary.

Beijing maintained that it was well within its sovereign rights to build the road as the area was an indisputable part of China.