Phone call at 8.45 am, then a video call: The backstory of the PLA’s pullback

Officials said the disengagement process was likely to be a gradual and calibrated process by both sides, with each point being negotiated by the military commanders on the ground.

Updated on: Jul 7, 2020, 12:27:32 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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India will adopt a cautious approach, cognizant of the risk of an “accident”, to the limited withdrawal by China’s People’s Liberation Army soldiers who had set off the stand-off at four locations in eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley and Pangong Lake.

Guided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and in close coordination with external affairs minister S Jaishankar, NSA Ajit Doval persuaded his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi why withdrawal in Ladakh was in the best interests of PLA

PLA has started troop withdrawal from the stand-off sites at three locations in the Galwan Valley and is in the process of dismantling some structures on Finger 4, one of the eight cliffs jutting out of the Sirijap range that overlooks the Pangong Lake.

The troop pullback till Monday evening was thinner, and slower at Finger 4 than the other locations, said an Indian military commander. “We need to keep track of the movements at Pangong Tso to arrive at any firm conclusion,” he said.

The army officer said PLA had been at a disadvantage in Galwan, Gogra and Hot Springs in terms of their military positions. In Pangong Tso, however, the situation favoured the Chinese since they had built a road up to Finger 4, he said.

Officials said the disengagement process was likely to be a gradual and calibrated process by both sides, with each point being negotiated by the military commanders on the ground.

China was the first to start thinning its troops at the site of the June 15 bloody clash that killed soldiers on both sides. Local army commanders quickly relayed the information to their superiors once they were able to establish a trend.

At just about 8.45am on Sunday, Indian Army chief General MM Naravane picked up the phone to inform defence minister Rajnath Singh. Diplomats from the two countries touched base and by evening, they had fixed a quick video conference between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and China’s foreign minister Wang Yi.

The conversation went on for about two hours. There were disagreements on who was to blame for the stand-off and the June 15 violence. But they had arrived at agreements on many points.

Doval told Wang that Beijing would need to restore the patrolling rights of the Indian army on these four points to ensure peace and tranquillity along the 1,597km Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Also read: For Ladakh stand-off, how India readied its fleet of Apache attack choppers

Analysts insist that the litmus test of the success of the Doval-Wang conversation would be the restoration of the Indian patrolling rights on the north banks of the Pangong Lake.

Indian officials said the military buildup in the depth areas on both sides of the LAC would continue till the situation at the stand-off points did not settle down. India had mobilised thousands of soldiers, fighter jets, attack helicopters, tanks and artillery guns to respond to the Chinese mobilisation.

It was during the disengagement process that violence broke out on June 15, the worst clash between soldiers of the two countries in 45 years.

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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