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NEW DELHI: Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Tuesday expressed India's desire to return to the status quo of April 2020 with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). This marks the Army chief's first statement regarding the India-China border patrolling agreement. After extensive negotiations, India and China have reached a consensus to revert to the pre-Galwan clash patrolling arrangements along the LAC in eastern Ladakh , which were in effect before 2020.
The agreement encompasses the Depsang and Demchok areas. "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," the Army chief said during the launch of Retd Army General Satish Dua's book, 'A General Reminisces - Life Under Fire in Kashmir'.
"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," he added. In a significant step towards normalizing bilateral relations, the government announced on Monday that the contentious disengagement process in eastern Ladakh had been completed, ending the 54-month-long military standoff in the region.
This announcement came just days before a proposed bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in Russia. Foreign secretary Vikram Misri stated that the two sides had reached an agreement on patrolling arrangements along the LAC in border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in 2020. Although Misri did not provide further details, foreign minister S Jaishankar affirmed that with this "positive" agreement, both sides have reverted to the situation that existed in 2020, and the disengagement process has been concluded.
The minister also said that Indian troops will once again be able to conduct patrolling as they did before the standoff erupted in 2020. This development, which followed a series of meetings between India and China since July this year, has paved the way for a formal bilateral meeting between Modi and Xi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan..
