India-China Disengagement Complete, Exchange Of Sweets Today: Sources

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Sticking to the announced timeline, India and China have completed disengagement in the Depsang and Demchok regions of Eastern Ladakh and patrolling will begin soon, said Army sources, adding that sweets will also be exchanged with troops from the Chinese side on the occasion of Diwali today. 

The sources from the Indian Army said on Wednesday that the verification process is on and the modalities of patrolling will be decided by the ground commanders. Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong told reporters in Kolkata hours later that the two countries had reached “many important understandings”.

“There was a very important meeting between President Xi Jinping and PM Narendra Modi (on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia last week). Now that the two leaders have reached important understandings, they will be the guidelines for the further development of relations between our two countries. I hope that, under the guidance of this consensus, our relations will be moving forward smoothly in the future and they will not be restricted or interrupted by specific disagreements between our two sides,” the ambassador said.        

“As two neighbouring countries, it is natural that we have some differences and the most important thing is how to handle and solve them. The meeting of the two leaders has set a very good example for us on how to handle these differences,” he added. 

Satellite Images

On October 21, India had announced that a patrolling agreement had been reached for the two contentious areas of Depsang and Demchok and the troops would return to the positions that existed before the stand-off between the two countries began in 2020. 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.

Forward Movement

The stand-off began in May 2020 and a clash took place in Ladakh’s Galwan the next month in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed in action and the Chinese side also suffered losses, with the exact number remaining unconfirmed.

A troop buildup followed on both sides and military-level talks began taking place to resolve the stand-off. 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.

After the latest patrolling agreement was announced by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on October 21, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had confirmed it at the NDTV World Summit. 

“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,” he added. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi then met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia – their first bilateral since 2019 – on October 23 and the two leaders welcomed the agreement. “It should be our priority to ensure there is peace and stability along our border,” PM Modi told Mr Jinping.