The Indian Army today “successfully completed” patrolling to one of the patrol points in the Depsang region of Ladakh following a consensus between the Indian and Chinese troops last month over patrolling arrangements in Demchock and Depsang.
The 14 Corps, also known as the Fire and Fury Corps, gave an update and said, “Following the consensus reached between the Indian and Chinese Side for disengagement and resumption of patrolling in Depsang and Demchok, the Indian Army patrol to one of the patrolling points in Depsang was successfully conducted today.”
“This is yet another positive step towards maintaining peace and tranquillity on the LAC,” the Fire and Fury Corps said.
The Ministry of External Affairs in its briefing last week said, the verification patrolling has commenced in the two regions – Demchok in eastern Ladakh and Depsang in the north – making way for coordinated patrolling to begin.
The breakthrough was announced a day before Prime Minister Modi was scheduled to leave for the BRICS Summit in Russia, where he held bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit.
On October 21, the MEA announced that the “last phase of disengagement was agreed upon between India and China” over patrolling arrangements in the two regions and the troops would return to the positions that existed before the stand-off in 2020, which saw a violent clash in the Galwan valley and standoff in the Pangong Tso region and Gogra Hot Springs and heavy troop and armour deployment in the region.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed the announcement at the NDTV World Summit that day and said “We reached an agreement on patrolling, and we have gone back to the 2020 position. With that, we can say the disengagement with China has been completed… There are areas which, for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them. We have now reached an understanding which will allow patrolling as we had been doing till 2020.”
In 2021, the two sides completed disengagement on the north and south bank of the Pangong Tso (lake) in eastern Ladakh after Corps Commander level talks. A year later, In September 2022, Indian and Chinese troops withdrew from the contentious Gogra-Hot Springs area in Ladakh and returned to the pre-April-2020 position.
On Diwali, Indian and Chinese troops stationed at the Line of Actual Control exchanged sweets and sources had told NDTV that the verification process is on and the modalities of patrolling will be decided by the ground commanders.
Satellite Images
The disengagement process included the dismantling of structures and the restoration of the land on which they stood to their original condition.
Days after the agreement was announced, NDTV had accessed the first satellite images proving that structures were being removed by the Chinese side.
An image from the Depsang plains taken on October 11 showed four vehicles and two tents and, in another from October 25, the tents were gone and the vehicles could be seen moving away. The images were of an area near the ‘Y Junction’ from where Indian soldiers were prevented from travelling east to India’s patrolling points, which mark the extent of the Line of Actual Control that India claims in these areas.
Another set of images showed semi-permanent Chinese structures being removed from Demchok.
