Troop disengagement nearly complete at 2 Ladakh sites

NEW DELHI: India and China have “more or less” completed their phased disengagement from the two remaining face-off sites at Demchok and Depsang in eastern Ladakh , with rival troops falling back almost to their pre-April 2020 positions after dismantling their temporary posts, sheds, tents and other structures erected in the two areas.

“The plan now is to fully verify the mutual pullback over the next two days, both physically on the ground as well as through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Some verification has already begun. Coordinated patrolling by the two sides will thereafter take place,” a top defence establishment source told TOI on Monday night.

The Indian Army pla ns to launch its patrols in Depsang and Demchok by the end of this month, with advance notice being given to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to prevent the possibility of any face-off or clash.


The strength of the patrols will depend on the task assigned to them as well as the distance to be covered. “The shorter-range patrols have 10-15 soldiers, while the longer ones 20-25. Our troops should now get full and unrestricted access to our traditional patrolling points (PPs), where our soldiers were being blocked from going to earlier,” a source said.

The PLA will also intimate India before sending out its patrols, under the “patrolling arrangements” for Depsang-Demchok first announced by India on Oct 21 after a flurry of diplomatic and military talks, which paved the way for the Modi-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the Brics summit in Russia two days later.

Sources, meanwhile, also said talks are underway to ease the situation in “sensitive” areas like Yangtse, Asaphila and Subansiri river valley in Arunachal Pradesh.


All this, however, does not mean that the festering border confrontation with China, which erupted after the PLA’s multiple incursions into eastern Ladakh in a well-coordinated manner in April-May 2020, is anywhere close to being resolved.

For that to happen, China will have to agree to de-escalation along the entire 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC), stretching from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, with both sides also de-inducting their well over 1,00,000 troops each that have been forward deployed along the entire frontier.

The “full verification” of the Depsang-Demchok disengagement will take two days since Indian “tactical commanders” will physically go to some PPs to check if all “PLA obstructions” have been removed. “In some places, it takes six to eight hours to reach our PPs,” the source said.

In the strategically located Depsang Plains, which is towards the crucial Daulat Beg Oldie and Karakoram Pass in the north, Chinese troops have pulled back from their positions on the “east side” of the “Bottleneck” area, while Indian soldiers have moved back from the “west” one. PLA till now was actively blocking Indian soldiers at the Bottleneck area, which is around 18km inside what India considers its own territory.

Similarly, Indian soldiers will now get access to two PPs in the Charding Ninglung Nallah track junction near Demchok in the south, while Indian shepherds will also be able to take their animals to traditional grazing grounds there.

The Depsang-Demchok pact does not include the creation of no-patrol buffer zones that came up after the earlier disengagements till Sept 2022. The rival military officers are separately discussing restoration of patrolling rights at the buffer zones at Galwan, north bank of Pangong Tso, the Kailash Range and the larger Gogra-Hot Springs area, varying from 3-km to 10-km, which largely came up on what India considers to be its own territory.