Indian Army chief on Ladakh stand-off deal: ‘Trying to restore trust, want pre-2020 status’

In his first public response to the eastern Ladakh stand-off deal that India and China have announced over the past two days, Indian Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Tuesday said New Delhi remains committed to re-establish the status quo of April 2020 with Beijing along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

This comes after India and China said that the two sides have reached an agreement in the military stand-off that began in April-May 2020, when the Chinese troops reportedly tried to change the status quo along the LAC. The friction turned into the bloodiest physical fight between the soldiers from the two sides, resulting in the death of 20 Indian personnel and an unspecified number of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in the Galwan Valley.

Speaking at the launch of Retd Army General Satish Dua’s book — A General Reminisces: Life Under Fire in Kashmir — General Dwivedi said, “We want to go back to the status quo of April 2020. Thereafter we will be looking at disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of LAC… This has been our stand since April 2020."

He said, “As of now, we are trying to restore the trust. That will happen once we are able to see each other and we are able to convince and reassure each other that we are not creeping into buffer zones that have been created."

Following 31 rounds of military-level talks, India and China have agreed for joint patrolling on certain friction points. Though exact details are yet to be officially made public, reports suggest that the two countries reached a consensus after extensive negotiations to restore the pre-Galwan clash patrolling arrangements along the LAC in eastern Ladakh — it is the same that was in practice before 2020. Reports say the agreement includes areas of the Depsang and Demchok.

This development marks a significant step towards normalising India-China ties that spilled over trade and other areas of cooperation. India began with a series of decisions to ban hundreds of Chinese mobile phone applications that were considered intrusive and violative of Indian laws. The action by the Modi government triggered a chain reaction, with several countries taking that route that cost China billions in business.

The announcement of the agreement comes amid a worrying slump in China’s economy. Its growth figures have remained low despite the government’s constant push to revive its economy that was hit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic years.

The eastern Ladakh stand-off was on the boil for 54 months before India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced on Monday that an agreement had been reached. Later, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed what Misri announced, saying that two countries had agreed for complete disengagement along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.  

Jaishankar also said that Indian troops would once again be able to conduct patrolling as they did before the standoff erupted in 2020.  

China confirmed the development on Wednesday, shortly after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping arrived in Russia’s Kazan for the Brics summit, on whose sidelines they are speculated to hold bilateral talks. The two leaders had last held talks in South Africa during the previous Brics summit in 2023.