India prepared for a long haul over disengagement but not yield an inch in Ladakh

As of now, there is no change of situation on ground with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops still on finger four mountainous spur on north Pangong Tso lake and Indian Army dominating the Rezang La Rechin La ridgeline on the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Updated on: Sep 23, 2020, 13:48:59 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Although India and China has agreed to stop sending more troops to Ladakh front-line, New Delhi is prepared for a long haul of multiple rounds of military-diplomatic talks before a firm political understanding is reached between two sides on complete disengagement.

In this September 8 file photo, Chinese soldiers armed with stick-machetes during their deployment along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh sector. (ANI Photo)

“This is going to be a long drawn out process and it will be foolhardy to assume that results will be achieved in one or two rounds of talks. While both sides have agreed in principle not to send more troops to the border, there is no means for both sides to verify this on ground as neither would like to share information collected through communication intercepts and spatial intelligence,” said a senior official.

As of now, there is no change of situation on ground with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops still on finger four mountainous spur on north Pangong Tso lake and Indian Army dominating the Rezang La Rechin La ridgeline on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). There has been no change in situation in Gogra-Hot Springs sector as the PLA have linked the withdrawal there to Pangong Tso disengagement.

ALSO WATCH | DRDO’s plan to help feed Indian forces amid Ladakh long haul against China

China watchers believe that the Ladakh situation will require a series of dialogues before understanding between the two sides builds up on how to keep the LAC quiet post May intrusions by the PLA in western sector. Given the continuous infra upgrade across the occupied Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh by China, the PLA capacity to rapidly deploy on the LAC is better than Indian Army. This means that till such time a larger political understanding is reached, the Indian Army will have to be on alert all along the LAC as PLA cannot be allowed to take advantage again.

Apart from Ladakh, there has been PLA build-up in depth areas of Arunachal with focus around Nyingchi as the latter is going to connected soon with Lhasa by rail road. The Chinese are also building a rail road from Shigatse or Xigaze to Yatong or Yadong in Chumbi Valley, which will put pressure on Indian Siliguri corridor. The upgrade in Tibet and Xinjiang is not only designed to put pressure on India but largely to consolidate the hold of Han Chinese on these sensitive areas as part of the Communist party’s Sinicization programme.

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

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.