India waits for China’s PLA to disengage at Ladakh, says won’t allow a ‘new normal’

India-China border stand-off: The Modi government is watching the time taken by the PLA to restore status quo ante as anything less would be an exercise in perfidy.

Updated on: Jun 27, 2020, 17:13:36 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Border tensions in East Ladakh have come down a notch with India waiting for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to fulfil its June 6 commitment of de-escalating and disengaging its troops along the 1,597 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the western sector.

India-China border dispute: A fully loaded MiG 29 fighter during a combat air patrol of Ladakh skies (AFP)

While the two armies are locked in a forward military posture in the Ladakh sector, reports of some lowering of tensions from two out of four standoff points are trickling in despite both the sides continuing to remain in high military alert.

“The border situation continues to be dynamic and it is for the PLA to restore status quo ante after it unilaterally tried to change the ground situation over the last month in violation with the existing agreements and confidence building measures,” said a senior official.

The Narendra Modi government is very clear that the PLA does not establish a new normal on the LAC and wants it to go back to its earlier positions for peace and tranquility to prevail on the border and for bilateral ties to be restored. It is also watching the time taken by the PLA to restore status quo ante as anything less would be an exercise in perfidy.

Both the sides are engaged in a dialogue through diplomatic and military channels with India looking at physical verification of the PLA withdrawal before coming out with any positive statement. With the Darbuk-Shyok Daulat Beg Oldi (DSDBO) road complete, Indian Army engineers are now connecting patrolling posts with roads so that the capacity and capability of troops to respond to any unilateral action from across the border rises manifold.

With China deploying surface-to-air missiles in Aksai Chin in May, the Indian side has also responded in the same fashion with long-range weapons placed all along the 3,488 km LAC. Besides China, the Indian Army is also watching the Pakistani posture in occupied Gilgit-Baltistan.

Although many a western strategists have stated that India will take help of its key ally US in case the red flag goes up, the mood in the Narendra Modi government is to go solo with sufficient force deployed to repel any action of the adversary. The Indian military is deployed in air, land and at sea with submarines patrolling the deep ocean and ready for any deterrent action.

However, national security planners are confident that better sense will prevail over PLA Commander-in-Chief Xi Jinping and Western Theatre Commander Zhao Zongqi as no conflict is one sided.

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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