By September 12, India and China will have finished their disengagement from the Gogra-Hotsprings region of eastern Ladakh, the External Affairs Ministry announced on Friday in New Delhi.
A day after the Indian and Chinese forces declared they had started to withdraw from the Gogra-Hotsprings Patrolling Point 15, where the two sides had been engaged in a standoff for more than two years, the ministry made its statement.
A week prior to the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Uzbekistan, which is anticipated to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping among other leaders of the organisation, the disengagement of troops was announced.
By September 12, India and China will have finished their disengagement from the Gogra-Hotsprings region of eastern Ladakh, the External Affairs Ministry announced on Friday in New Delhi.
A day after the Indian and Chinese forces declared they had started to withdraw from the Gogra-Hotsprings Patrolling Point 15, where the two sides had been engaged in a standoff for more than two years, the ministry made its statement.
A week prior to the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Uzbekistan, which is anticipated to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping among other leaders of the organisation, the disengagement of troops was announced.
We believe the disengagement will be a positive development and is conducive to peace and tranquilly in the border areas, and China also hopes to work with India to uphold this. Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, said she has “no information to offer at this moment” when asked whether India and China are in communication about a potential Modi-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the SCO summit, which will take place in Samarkand from September 15 to 16.
Arindam Bagchi, a spokesman for the External Affairs Ministry, responded to a question about the disengagement process by saying, “It has been agreed that all temporary structures and other allied infrastructure created in the area by both sides will be dismantled and mutually verified, and the landforms in the area will be restored to the pre-standoff period by both sides.”
He said, “The two sides have agreed to end forward deployments in this area in a staged, coordinated, and confirmed manner, resulting in the return of the forces of both sides to their respective territories.
According to Bagchi, the agreement guarantees that all parties would rigorously adhere to and respect the LAC in this area and that the status quo won’t be changed unilaterally.
He claimed that on July 17, 2022, the Chushul Moldo meeting location served as the site of the 16th round of negotiations between the Corps Commanders of China and India.
According to him, since then, “the two parties had maintained continuous communication to build on the progress established during the negotiations to settle the pertinent problems along the LAC in the Western Sector of India-China border areas.”
As a result, he stated, both parties have now decided to disengage in the Gogra-Hotsprings (PP-15) region.
The disengagement procedure in this area began on September 8 at 8:30 am and will be finished by September 12 according to the agreement, according to Bagchi.
“Both sides decided to move the negotiations further and address the outstanding concerns along the LAC in order to restore peace and tranquilly in the India-China border areas,” he said after the standoff at PP-15 was resolved.
The Chinese defence ministry claimed in a statement released in Beijing that the coordinated and planned disengagement of Chinese and Indian forces in the vicinity of Jianan Daban is promoting calm and peace in the border regions.
According to Indian sources, the place that China is referring to as Jianan Daban is the same as Patrolling Point-15 in the Gogra-Hotsprings region that was mentioned in a news release from the Indian Army on Thursday.
