According to officials familiar with the situation, India and Chinese soldiers disengaged from Patrol Point-15 in the Gogra-Hot Springs region of eastern Ladakh on Monday. The process involved moving frontline troops to rear locations, taking down temporary infrastructure put in place there, and conducting a joint verification to determine whether the disengagement had been fully implemented.
According to one of the officials cited above who wished to remain unnamed, this is the fourth round of disengagement between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since the border dispute began in May 2020. The completion of this round has brought attention to the friction areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – Depsang and Demchok.
Although there was no official statement from the government regarding the most recent troop pullback, the disengagement at PP-15, which was announced jointly by India and China last week, is likely to result in the creation of a buffer zone of 2 to 4 km, as was done after the previous rounds of troop pullback from friction points.
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It took five days to complete the operation. After the 16th round of military negotiations in July, India and China declared on September 8 that their frontline soldiers had begun disengaging from PP -15.
“Discussions seem to be headed in the correct path. To resolve the unresolved issues in the other two areas, we should continue the diplomatic, political, and military consultations. Additionally, we shouldn’t anticipate outcomes from every round of negotiations, said Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia, a former director general of military operations (retd).
The issues at Depsang in the Daulet Beg Oldi sector and Charding Nullah Junction (CNJ) in the Demchok region are still being discussed after 16 rounds of military negotiations.
Despite their withdrawal from the Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso, Gogra (PP-17A), and now PP-15, the two armies still retain about 60,000 soldiers each and modern weapons stationed in the Ladakh theatre.
The final progress prior to the PP-15 development occurred in August 2021 when the two armies withdrew their forward-deployed forces from the Gogra sector. Disengagement of Indian and Chinese soldiers from friction spots on the LAC in the Ladakh sector had been frozen for more than a year (PP-17A).
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After the 16th round of military negotiations between Indian and Chinese corps commander-ranked officers on July 31, 2021, the two sides withdrew their personnel to their permanent bases from the Gogra sector, one of the LAC’s flashpoints.
The first of eight rounds of negotiations between the two armies took place in June of 2020. There were five rounds of negotiations in 2021, and there have been three rounds of negotiations so far this year.
