Modi, Xi ask officials to ‘intensify’ efforts for disengagement of troops along LAC

The Line of Actual Control has been disputed by India and China since the 1950s. They went to war over it in 1962.

The leaders of India and China have agreed to step up efforts for mutually pulling back frontline troops from the remaining face-off points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh in order to end the more-than-three-year-long military stand-off.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping did not have a formal bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 15th BRICS summit at Johannesburg in South Africa. They, however, had a ‘conversation’, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said after the end of the summit on Thursday. He quoted Modi conveying to Xi the concerns of New Delhi over “the unresolved issues along the LAC in the western sector of India-China border areas”.

The prime minister underlined during his conversation with the president of the neighbouring communist country that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the border areas and observing and respecting the LAC were essential for the normalisation of the bilateral relationship. “Two leaders agreed to direct relevant officials to intensify efforts at expeditious disengagement and de-escalation”, Kwatra said, while briefing journalists about the prime minister’s participation in the BRICS summit.

This was the second time Modi and Xi had a conversation on the bilateral relations between New Delhi and Beijing after the aggressive moves by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to unilaterally change the status quo along the LAC in eastern Ladakh and the resistance and counter-deployment by the Indian Army in April-May 2020 had started a military stand-off in the Himalayas. The relations between the two nations hit a new low after the stand-off had reached a flashpoint with the violent clash between the soldiers of the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA in Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020.

The two leaders earlier had had a brief chat at a dinner during the G20 summit at Bali in Indonesia in November 2022. New Delhi had then described the interaction merely as an exchange of courtesy.

But after Beijing last month claimed that the interaction between the two leaders in Bali had resulted in an “important consensus” about India-China ties, New Delhi too acknowledged that they had indeed spoken of the need to stabilise the bilateral relations.

To avoid being caught off guard again by any subsequent revelation by Beijing, New Delhi on Thursday quickly made public the interaction between the prime minister and the neighbouring communist country’s president on the sideline of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

Xi is among the leaders New Delhi is expecting at the G20 summit, which Modi will host on September 9 and 10. To avert the awkward spectacle of the prime minister hosting the neighbouring country’s president amid the continuing military stand-off along the LAC, New Delhi recently had high-level contacts with Beijing leading up to the conversation between the two leaders in Johannesburg.

India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi are expected to follow up on the discussion between the leaders of the two nations and oversee negotiations between the military commanders and the diplomats of the two sides for mutual withdrawal of front-line troops from Depsang Plains and Demchok in eastern Ladakh.

The military commanders of India and China recently held the 19th round of negotiations to resolve the stand-off. They had ‘positive’ talks, but failed to reach an agreement for the disengagement of front-line troops in Depsang and Demchok.

Though protracted negotiations led to the mutual withdrawal of troops by both the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA from some of the face-off points along the LAC, like Galwan Valley, the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra Post and Hot Springs, the stand-off could not be resolved completely so far.

The PLA troops deployed in Depsang, well inside the territory of India along the LAC with China, are still continuing to block the Indian Army’s access to Patrolling Points 10, 11, 12, 12A and 13. A face-off is also continuing in Demchok. Beijing has of late been claiming that the mutual withdrawal of troops by the Chinese PLA and the Indian Army from Patrolling Point 15 (Gogra-Hotsprings area) in September 2022 marked the restoration of normalcy along the LAC in eastern Ladakh. China’s claim appears to be an attempt to subtly build up pressure on India to accept the “new normal” in the Depsang and Demchok areas.