India highlights need for peace and tranquillity on border with China following clashes
Amy chief Gen MM Naravane said Indian troops have always upheld peace and tranquillity along the frontier, and the country’s force posture wouldn’t suffer because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
India on Thursday emphasised the need for peace and tranquillity along the border with China following two clashes between Indian and Chinese troops, saying such incidents occurred because of differing perceptions of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Amy chief Gen MM Naravane said Indian troops have always upheld peace and tranquillity along the frontier, and the country’s force posture would not suffer because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Indian and Chinese border troops first clashed in eastern Ladakh near Pangong Lake on May 5 and then in north Sikkim last Saturday. Several soldiers on both sides were injured in these incidents, which marked the first major flare-up along the LAC since the 73-day standoff at Doklam in 2017.
“The Indian side remains committed to the objective of maintaining peace and tranquillity in the India-China border areas,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a regular news briefing via video conference.
He noted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, during their informal summits at Wuhan in 2018 and Mamallapuram in 2019, had reaffirmed both sides will continue efforts to ensure peace and tranquillity along the border. “This is essential for the overall development of the bilateral relations,” he said.
Both the Indian army chief and the external affairs ministry spokesperson pointed out face-offs between border troops along LAC occurred because of differing perceptions of the alignment of boundaries that are not resolved.
Navarane described the face-offs as “temporary and short” and said the two incidents resulted in minor injuries to troops following “aggressive behaviour by both sides”. The two sides also “disengaged after dialogue and interaction at [the] local level”, he said.
Srivastava said such incidents could have been avoided “if we had a common perception of the LAC”. The two sides have established mechanisms to resolve such situations.
The India-China border has “largely been peaceful” as a result of directions from Modi and Xi to their militaries to “earnestly implement various confidence-building measures…including the principle of mutual and equal security, and strengthen existing institutional arrangements and information-sharing mechanisms to prevent incidents in border regions”, Srivastava said.
Naravane contended the two clashes were not co-related and had no connection with other global or local activities. “I can say with confidence that the development of infrastructure capabilities along our northern borders is on track. Our force posture will not suffer due to the Covid pandemic.”
The Border Roads Organisation is continuing its work amid the Covid-19 pandemic to connect far-flung areas so that civilians in those locations are connected and to facilitate faster development, the army chief said.
The face-off at Doklam, which was triggered by China’s efforts to build a road in territory claimed by Bhutan, took India-China relations to a fresh low. It also sparked one of the worst military stand-offs since the 1962 war, and ties returned to an even keel after the first informal summit at Wuhan in 2018.
Since New Delhi’s decision to scrap Jammu & Kashmir’s special status last August, China, acting at the behest of its traditional ally Pakistan, has criticised India’s actions in Kashmir several times. China has opposed the division of the state into two union territories. These developments have affected bilateral ties.
HT was the first to report on May 10 about intensifying of India-China border tensions in Sikkim, where 150 soldiers were involved in a tense standoff a day earlier. Four Indian and seven Chinese soldiers were injured at Naku La during the confrontation.
Scores of soldiers from the two countries clashed in Ladakh on the night of May 5-6, as reported by HT on May 11. A few soldiers from both sides were injured in the scuffle that involved around 250 men, and a flare-up was avoided as both armies stuck to protocols to resolve the situation.