The Line of Actual Control (LAC) –the de facto border – has been effectively shifted by a kilometre (km) into India, Business Standard quoting government forces reported following the mutual troop disengagement in the contested Galwan River valley .
According to the newspaper, the terms of disengagement, negotiated on June 30 between senior military commanders from both sides, regard the LAC as running through the so-called Y-Nallah Junction, “This is one km inside India, when compared with the LAC’s historical alignment next to Patrolling Point 14 (PP-14),”
Adding that the area in which PP-14 is located – and which the Indian Army has patrolled for decades – now effectively falls inside China’s “buffer zone”.
The disengagement plan, drawn up by India’s Leh corps commander, Lieutenant General Harinder Singh, and China’s South Xinjiang Military Region commander, Major General Liu Lin, provides for a “buffer zone” of three km on both the Indian and Chinese sides of the LAC.
The plan permits each country to maintain two “tent posts” in its “buffer zone”. The forward “tent post” will be located 1.4 km from the Y-junction. Their second “tent post” will be 1.6 km further behind the forward post, i.e. three km from the Y-Junction.
Each country is permitted to maintain 30 soldiers in its forward “tent post” and another 50 soldiers in its rear “tent post” – adding up to 80 soldiers each.
A “tent post”, as its name suggests, is an encampment that has only temporary structures. Permanent structures would allow India to stake a claim over the Galwan valley.
By restricting the Indian presence to “tent camps”, China can continue with its new claim over the entire Galwan River valley – which it has voiced several times in the past two months.
Business Standard quoting unnamed officials reports that, by measuring all distances from the Y-Junction, rather than from the traditional LAC alignment west of PP-14, the Y-Junction has been effectively regarded as the LAC point.
It is learnt that this was done on the insistence of Chinese military negotiators. New Delhi continues to insist that the LAC runs along the line of PP-14, but has undermined its own claim by agreeing to locate its forward “tent post” 2.4 km from what it claims is the LAC, while allowing the Chinese forward “tent post” to be just 400 metres from our claimed LAC.
For now, neither country is permitted to send patrols ahead of their forward “tent post”, “That means the Indian army, which earlier sent patrols all the way up the Galwan River valley to PP-14, will have to maintain a distance of 2.4 km from PP-14. In contrast, Chinese patrols can come up to 400 metres from PP-14,” the report notes.
Adding that no agreement has been reached for the Chinese to disengage or pull back from confrontation points south of Galwan at PP-15 and Hot Spring area, where large numbers of Indian and Chinese soldiers continue their face-off.
Near PP-15, where the Chinese have built a road extending 3 km into Indian-claimed territory, more than 1,000 Chinese troops are eyeball-to-eyeball with an equal number of Indian soldiers.
“In the Hot Spring area, the Chinese have not built a road, but over 1,500 Chinese troops have intruded 2-3 km into Indian territory at the Gogra Heights (PP-17A) and are being blocked by a matching Indian deployment,” says the newspaper report.
Nor is there any agreement on disengagement in the Pangong Tso sector. Here, Chinese troops have crossed the existing LAC that ran along a mountain spur called Finger 8 and intruded 8 km into Indian-claimed territory up to a spur called Finger 4.
Indian troops have traditionally patrolled up to Finger 8, but are now being blocked by the Chinese intruders at Finger 4. It is understood the Chinese are refusing to withdraw to Finger 8 unless India withdraws to Finger 2.
