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NEW DELHI: India and China will hold their next round of top-level military talks on the 17-month long troop confrontation in eastern Ladakh on Sunday, even as General M M Naravane said Indian soldiers will not budge an inch from their forward deployment along the frontier as long as the Chinese troops stay there.
“It’s a matter of concern that the large-scale Chinese troop build-up, which had occurred last year, continues to be in place. To sustain that kind of a build-up, there has been an equal amount of infrastructure development on the Chinese side,” the Army chief said on Saturday, speaking at the India Today conclave.
“So, it means they (People’s Liberation Army) are there to stay. We are keeping a close watch on all these developments. But if they are there to stay, we are there to stay too. The build-up and infrastructure development on our side are as good as what the PLA has done,” Gen Naravane added.
Other senior officers say it is likely that the rival troops will continue to stay forward deployed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) for the second consecutive winter in eastern Ladakh, where temperatures dip to as low as minus 30 degree Celsius amidst acute oxygen deprivation.
Some progress, however, is expected in completing the stalled troop disengagement at Patrolling Point-15 (PP-15), which is 30-km north of the Gogra area, during the 13th round of corps commander-level talks on the Chinese side of the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on Sunday.
“A lot of spadework has gone into discussing the disengagement from PP-15. It should not be a major problem since there are just 40-50 rival soldiers each in close proximity there, though there are thousands more in the rear positions,” said an officer.
A similar stalled disengagement was completed at PP-17A, which is near India’s crucial Gogra post, as per the agreement reached during the 12th round of talks on July 31. Earlier, the two sides had also disengaged from the tense and much bigger standoff in the Pangong Tso-Kailash Range region in February.
But no breakthrough is expected at resolving the other “friction points” in the strategically-located Depsang Bulge area, where the PLA has been consistently blocking Indian patrols in the `Bottleneck’ area from going to their traditional PPs-10, 11, 11A, 12, and 13 since early-last year, as well as the Charding Ninglung Nallah (CNN) track junction in the Demchok sector.
The recent stepped-up PLA’s “transgressions” in other stretches of the 3,488-km LAC, especially in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, has also heightened tensions between the two armies.
Gen Naravane, on his part, said if the PLA maintains its forward deployment in eastern Ladakh through the second winter, then it will lead to an “Line of Control-like situation” (with Pakistan), though not “an active one” like on the western front. “We will definitely have to keep a close eye on all their deployments to see they don’t get into any misadventure once again,” he said.
“It’s a matter of concern that the large-scale Chinese troop build-up, which had occurred last year, continues to be in place. To sustain that kind of a build-up, there has been an equal amount of infrastructure development on the Chinese side,” the Army chief said on Saturday, speaking at the India Today conclave.
“So, it means they (People’s Liberation Army) are there to stay. We are keeping a close watch on all these developments. But if they are there to stay, we are there to stay too. The build-up and infrastructure development on our side are as good as what the PLA has done,” Gen Naravane added.
Other senior officers say it is likely that the rival troops will continue to stay forward deployed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) for the second consecutive winter in eastern Ladakh, where temperatures dip to as low as minus 30 degree Celsius amidst acute oxygen deprivation.
Some progress, however, is expected in completing the stalled troop disengagement at Patrolling Point-15 (PP-15), which is 30-km north of the Gogra area, during the 13th round of corps commander-level talks on the Chinese side of the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on Sunday.
“A lot of spadework has gone into discussing the disengagement from PP-15. It should not be a major problem since there are just 40-50 rival soldiers each in close proximity there, though there are thousands more in the rear positions,” said an officer.
A similar stalled disengagement was completed at PP-17A, which is near India’s crucial Gogra post, as per the agreement reached during the 12th round of talks on July 31. Earlier, the two sides had also disengaged from the tense and much bigger standoff in the Pangong Tso-Kailash Range region in February.
But no breakthrough is expected at resolving the other “friction points” in the strategically-located Depsang Bulge area, where the PLA has been consistently blocking Indian patrols in the `Bottleneck’ area from going to their traditional PPs-10, 11, 11A, 12, and 13 since early-last year, as well as the Charding Ninglung Nallah (CNN) track junction in the Demchok sector.
The recent stepped-up PLA’s “transgressions” in other stretches of the 3,488-km LAC, especially in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, has also heightened tensions between the two armies.
Gen Naravane, on his part, said if the PLA maintains its forward deployment in eastern Ladakh through the second winter, then it will lead to an “Line of Control-like situation” (with Pakistan), though not “an active one” like on the western front. “We will definitely have to keep a close eye on all their deployments to see they don’t get into any misadventure once again,” he said.
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