Military Delegation from China in India

Continuing with their military-to-military interactions after the Doklam troop stand-off led to a freeze for several months, a senior Chinese delegation is now in India to hold talks as a confidence-building measure between the two armies ranged against each other along the unresolved Line of Actual Control.

The two sides talked about reducing and managing troop confrontations along the 4,057-km long LAC stretching from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh in the delegation-level meeting led the Chinese Western Theatre Command’s deputy chief of staff Major General Deng Zhiping and the Indian Defence Cooperation Division chief Major General Jaishankar in the morning.

The People’s Liberation Army delegation of 12 officers then visited the Rajputana Rifles Centre in New Delhi, and is slated to leave for Agra on Thursday to witness operations by the 50 Para Brigade stationed there. “The Chinese delegation will thereafter go to the Eastern Army Command at Kolkata. The need to resume such military-to-military exchanges was brought up by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman when she visited China earlier this year,” said an officer.

The two countries are currently also holding their annual “Hand-in-Hand” (HiH) combat exercise in Chengdu, which too had got derailed last year due to the 73-day troop stand-off near the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet trijunction. “The 3 Infantry Division commander Major General Sanjeev Rai will be reaching Chengdu on Thursday as an observer for the exercise,” said the officer.

Though the two sides are yet to “operationalize” the pending top-level hotline between their militaries, they are working towards better implementation of CBMs, additional border personnel meeting (BPM) points and greater interaction between local commanders on the ground.

It was in June last year that the 73-day eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation had begun after Indian troops had physically blocked the attempt by Chinese soldiers to extend the existing motorable road there towards the Jampheri Ridge in south Doklam. Though the two armies had disengaged from the face-off site on August 28 after hectic diplomatic parleys, the fallout has been that the PLA has constructed military infrastructure and helipads as well as permanently stationed around 600-700 troops in north Doklam, as earlier reported by TOI.

Source:TNN

Image Source:ANI