Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 9: The disengagement process of the Indian and Chinese armies in the Gogra-Hot Springs area in Eastern Ladakh will be completed by Monday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday.
“The sixteenth round of talks between the Corps Commanders of India and China was held at Chushul Moldo Meeting Point on 17 July 2022. Since then, the two sides had maintained regular contact to build on the progress achieved during the talks to resolve the relevant issues along the LAC in the Western Sector of India-China border areas,” the MEA said in its statement.
“As a result, both sides have now agreed on disengagement in the area of Gogra-Hot Springs (PP-15). As per the agreement, the disengagement process in this area started on September 8 at 0830 hrs and will be completed by 12 September 2022. The two sides have agreed to cease forward deployments in this area in a phased, co-ordinated and verified manner, resulting in the return of the troops of both sides to their respective areas,” the statement read.
Both sides have agreed that all temporary structures and other allied infrastructure created in the area will be dismantled and mutually verified, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said. The landforms in the area will be restored to pre-stand-off period by both sides. The agreement ensures that the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in this area would be strictly observed and respected by both sides, and that there would be no unilateral change in status quo, Bagchi said.
The response from the ministry came a day after the Indian and Chinese armies announced the beginning of the disengagement process from the Gogra-Hot Springs Patrolling Point 15, where the two sides have been locked in a standoff for over two years. India and China have also agreed to take the talks forward and resolve remaining issues and restore peace and tranquillity along LAC, the MEA added.
The development comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Uzbekistan visit for the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit where the Chinese president Xi Jinping will also be present. The two leaders have not met or spoken since the November 2019 meeting in Brasilia, which was only a month after Jinping’s visit to Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu for an informal summit.
India and China have been able to disengage so far from the Galwan region where fierce clashes between soldiers of both sides took place in June 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers laid down their lives for the country. Over 40 Chinese soldiers were also reportedly killed or injured. India and China had previously disengaged at PP14 in Galwan Valley in 2020, in Pangong Lake in February 2021, and in PP17A in Gogra in August last year.
Though there have been breakthroughs on both Galwan Valley and the banks of Pangong Lake further south in Ladakh, Chinese soldiers are still believed to hold large swathes of Indian territory to the north in the Depsang plains. Issues at Demchok and Depsang remain unresolved.
India has been ramping up its overall military might in all strategically key areas along the nearly 3,500-km-long LAC after the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020, which triggered a major escalation in tensions between India and China.
Chinese military also confirmed on Friday that the disengagement process had been started in Gogra Hot Springs area from PP15 in a step forward towards resolving the stand-off between the two countries in Eastern Ladakh.
China’s Ministry of Defence, in a statement identical to what India released on Thursday, noted that “according to the consensus reached in the 16th Round of China-India Corps Commander Level Meeting, the Chinese and Indian troops in the area of Jianan Daban [as China refers to the PP15 area] have begun to disengage in a coordinated and planned way, which is conducive to the peace and tranquillity in the border areas.”
The last round of Corps Commander Talks for resolving the stand-off in PP15 was held on July 17 but working out the modalities for disengagement had taken longer than India had expected with the view that the Chinese military had put forward unreasonable suggestions.
