We are trying to restore trust, reassure each other, other stages will follow through: Army Chief 

India and China agree on patrolling and disengagement in Ladakh, aiming to restore trust and ensure normal LAC management.

A day after the Foreign Secretary announced that India and China have reached an agreement on patrolling and disengagement in Eastern Ladakh, Army Chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi sounded a cautionary note stressing that they are trying to “restore trust” and “reassure each other” and once that is restored other stages — disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) — will follow through.

“As of now what has happened. We are trying to restore the trust. How will that get restored? Trust will get restored if we are able to each other. And we are able to convince each other… that buffer zones which are there, which have been created, we are not creeping. Both have to reassure each other. Patrolling gives you that kind of advantage. So that is what something which is commencing. And as we restore the trust, the other stages will also follow through soon,” Gen Dwivedi said. He was speaking at the 28th Colonel Pyara Lal memorial lecture organised by the United Service Institution of India.

“As far as we are concerned, we want to go back to status quo of April 2020,” he reiterated. “There after we will be looking at disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of LAC. The normal management of LAC will not stop there. There are phases in that also.”

“This has been our stance from April 2020 when Lt Gen YK Joshi was the Army Commander and even today that remains the same,” the Army Chief stressed.

India and China have reached an agreement on “patrolling arrangements ” along the LAC leading to “disengagement and a resolution” of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020, Foreign Secretary Vikram Masri announced on Monday (October 21, 2024) which officials said includes disengagement at Depsang and Demchok. Later External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that with the agreement they have gone back to where the situation was in 2020. “With that we can say the disengagement process with China has been completed,” he said.

Further Mr. Jaishankar has said that there are areas which, for various reasons after 2020, they have blocked us, so we had blocked them. “We have reached an understanding which will allow the patrolling... Depsang, that’s not the only place there are other places also. The understanding is that we will be able to do patrolling which we were doing till 2020.”