Face-off at Rechin La leads to scuffle with aggressive PLA. Situation tense but ground commanders talking

India is yet to issue a formal statement on the latest clash.

Updated on: Sep 8, 2020, 08:26:39 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Two days before external affairs minister S Jaishankar meets his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow, there are reports of a scuffle between the Indian Army and an aggressive People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the Rezang-La-Rechin La ridgeline with some injuries sustained by Indian troopers as China wants to unilaterally change the status quo south of Pangong Tso.

The Indian ground commanders are under firm instructions to take decisions on the spot so that there is no time lag in a reaction to PLA. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

According to top Indian official on Tuesday morning, the situation is tense but both sides are talking to each other at the ground commander level. Apparently, the situation reached criticality on Monday evening after a stand-off between aggressive PLA troops and Indian troops on Rechin La. The stand-off started at 6.15pm.

While the Western Theatre Command late on Monday night accused of Indian troops of firing warning shots and talked about countermeasures to “stabilize the situation”, the fact is that the Indian Army had to open warning shots even in the last week of August as the Chinese wanted to reach to the Green Line (their perception of Line of Actual Control since 1960), south of Pangong Tso. In the first week of September, PLA has fortified all its positions on the contested points and build up troop strength south of the lake as the difference in LAC perception is large in this area.

While the Western Theatre Command, which functions directly under Commander in Chief Xi Jinping, accuses Indian troops of aggression, the Indian objective is to hold its territory and prevent a PLA land grab in the area. The Indian ground commanders are under firm instructions to take decisions on the spot so that there is no time lag in a reaction to PLA, which on the face of it is talking peace but out for a fight on the ground.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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