PM Modi on Ladakh front with strong message to protect border from China’s PLA

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Ladakh region has sent a huge signal to China that India means business.

Updated on: Jul 3, 2020, 16:34:23 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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For an average healthy human, it takes at least two days to acclimatize to Leh’s height of over 11,000 feet with rarefied atmosphere, dry air and ultra-violet rays from a blazing sun in cold desert Ladakh. But 69-year old Prime Minister Narendra Modi today defied physical odds when he landed up at Kushok Bakula Rimpochee airport at Leh to be briefed about operational preparedness of the Indian military against the aggressive Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Ladakh to review the ground situation at the border with China (PTI)

Accompanied by Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and Army Chief Manoj Mukund Naravane, Prime Minister went straight to XIV Corps headquarters at Nimu outside Leh to understand the Chinese belligerence in Ladakh with Corps Commander Lt Gen Harinder Singh briefing Narendra Modi in presence of Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Y K Joshi.

Also Read: PM Modi wraps up Ladakh visit with a swipe at China, says times have changed

The decision of PM Modi to go to Leh was kept under wraps till he landed at the airport with the entire coordination done by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Rawat and Naravane. Doval, who came out of self-imposed isolation after two weeks, chose to remain back in Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat arrives in Leh (PTI)

The presence of PM Modi in the Ladakh region has not only sent a huge signal to China that India means business and will not surrender even an inch of its territory but also to the local population with the head of government coming down to reassure them.

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The PM’s visit is also a very strong message to President Xi Jinping that either he gets his aggressive Western Theatre Commander Zhao Zongqi to restore status quo ante or accept the inevitable consequences of PLA escalation. The Indian Army and Chinese PLA are locked up at four points on the LAC in East Ladakh with the latter consolidating on ground while mouthing peace overtures.

Flanked by Gen Rawat and Gen Naravane, the PM has also assured the country that India is quite capable of handling China, which has created both health and security problems for the globe with corona virus from Wuhan and pre-meditated confrontation with India, ASEAN and Australia.

It is understood that PM Modi will give a clear message to the Ladakh commanders that they should not initiate any escalation from their side but also retaliate to any aggression. The same message was also given out during the 2017 Doklam crisis.

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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