No more jostling on LAC, issues being resolved through hotlines

To prevent smaller incidents from escalating, the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army are in regular contact through the hotlines along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), and the practice of ‘body pushing’ has been stopped, Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Upendra Dwivedi said on Friday. He also said that India has developed strategic patience as it is negotiating from a position of assertiveness to resolve the two-year standoff in eastern Ladakh.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of North Tech Symposium Seminar at the headquarters of the Northern Command, Lt Gen Dwivedi also said that during the negotiations, India wants forces to step back, to de-escalate, but there is a difference of perception on how that should be done.

“To make sure that there is no irritant which is likely to become a violent situation, what we have done is, at the lower level , that is at the battalion and brigade level, we have opened up various channels of communication. We have regular hotline exchanges and we have stopped the system of body push and so on that was there earlier and no physical contact is being ensured,” he said.

Lt Gen Dwivedi said that “wherever there is an irritant, we immediately call for talks at the battalion and brigade level, sit down together and come to an amicable solution”

Speaking about the situation along the LAC in eastern Ladakh, Lt Gen Dwivedi said that it is “stable but it is in the state of heightened alert. Because we don’t want a repeat of the situation which took place in April 2020.”

As a result, he said, “The force deployment and equipment deployment is calibrated in nature and we will make sure any misadventure by the adversary does not take place again.”

As far as issues of difference of perception of the LAC, he said, these are required to be handled at the higher level – Corps Commander and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) level. These meetings keep taking place regularly.

The 15th Corps Commander meeting took place on March 11. “(But since) these are long standing issues, perceptional differences are there, the MEA is also involved with us, they will take their own time. We both need to have strategic patience.”

“Earlier, we used to say Chinese have strategic patience. They are ready to wait. Now, the present India has come up a long way and we also have strategic patience and we are also ready to wait,” he said.