In a major breakthrough in the Ladakh standoff, the Chinese military on Friday confirmed their army and the Indian Army are disengaging at the Patrolling Point 15 in the Gogra-Hotsprings in eastern Ladakh. The process has started in a coordinated and planned way, they added. The Ladakh standoff started two years ago with the Chinese side attempting to transgress the Line of Actual Control and meeting stiff Indian resistance. In June 2020, 20 Indian soldiers died in the line of duty in brutal hand-to-hand combat while trying to beat back the Chinese attack. An unspecified number of Chinese soldiers, including senior officers, also perished in the border brawl.
India and China have been holding military-level dialogues since the standoff started and have secured disengagement in a host of important positions along the LAC. On several occasions, India's Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has said that normalising relations with China depended on the resolution of the standoff.
Recently, the two sides held the 16th round of talks.
China said in a statement: "On 8th September 2022, according to the consensus reached in the 16th Round of China-India Corps Commander Level Meeting, the Chinese and Indian troops in the area of Jianan Daban have begun to disengage in a coordinated and planned way, which is conducive to the peace and tranquility in the border areas".
Jianan Daban is Patrolling Point 15 at the Gogra-Hotsprings area in Ladakh.
The announcement came around a week ahead of the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Uzbekistan which is expected to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping among other leaders of the grouping.
Official sources told PTI in Delhi that the withdrawal of troops from Patrolling Point 15 (PP-15) began on Thursday morning and the local commanders from both sides are working out the modalities for the subsequent measures.
Following the 16th round of Corps Commander-level talks, ground commanders of both sides held a series of negotiations on the nitty-gritty of the disengagement process.
The sources said India will keep pressing for the resolution of pending issues in the remaining friction points of Depsang and Demchok.
As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process last year on the north and south banks of the Pangong lake and in the Gogra area.
The disengagement in the Pangong Lake area had taken place in February last year while the withdrawal of troops and equipment in Patrolling Point 17 (A) in Gogra took place in August last year.
The 16th round of military talks was held 10 days after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Bali, Indonesia.
With inputs from PTI
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