Indian Army changes posture at LAC after China’s failed midnight attempt

India China border row: The Indian Army has deployed a mix of armoured and mechanized elements at Depsang Plains and another combat group at Chumar

Updated on: Sep 4, 2020, 24:30:54 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The Indian Army has changed its posture from border management to securing the border on the 1,597 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh after People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) aggression in the Chushul sector followed by additional induction of troops and support elements, people familiar with the matter said. The PLA Air Force activity has gone up in the occupied Aksai Chin area with positions being militarily strengthened.

India China border: The PLA’s aggressive approach along the LAC has reached a dead end because it will not yield any results for Beijing, an officer said (HT Photo)

“The Indian Army is now in a secure border mode to pre-empt any Chinese PLA transgressions in vulnerable areas of Ladakh. The repositioning of Indian forces has been done to take the Chinese aggression into account in the area and to ensure that all positions are defended,” said a senior official.

The Indian Army has also matched the PLA’s pumping of troops into the sector by deploying additional specialised forces such as the Special Frontier Force that was raised to counter China after the 1962 war. SFF soldiers had played a lead role in preempting the Chinese PLA, which tried to grab Indian territory five days ago on the southern bank of Pangong Tso. Indian soldiers since then occupy key heights on the southern bank.

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The Indian Army has paid special focus by deploying a combat group (a mix of armoured and mechanised elements) at Depsang Plains to match a PLA mechanised brigade and another combat group at Chumar to signal to PLA that it means business and will not allow an inch of Indian land to be taken.

India dominates the Demchok and Chumar area, giving soldiers a clear line of sight to the Lhasa-Kashgar (219) highway, a critical artery for PLA logistics supply. The Indian posture at Chushul clearly indicates that any further PLA perfidy will receive a matching response, a military commander said.

While the PLA, under General Secretary Xi Jinping, is blaming the Indian Army domestically for aggravating the border situation, the Chinese are making no effort to sort out the border row diplomatically or militarily by just restoring status quo ante.

“It is a dead-end posturing as this will not yield any results for PLA as neither side can deploy troops all along the 3,488 km LAC round the clock throughout the year,” said a senior official.

Although the military and diplomatic parleys are on, the Indian Army troopers are leaving nothing to chance and are prepared for the worst case scenario with the decisions taken on the spot not by the headquarters.

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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