India wants hotline connecting Indian and Chinese army headquarters

India will be asking for a hotline connecting the army headquarters of India and China at the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India China Border Affairs (WMCC).

WMCC will be the first major bilateral meeting between the two countries after a 73-day stand-off in the Doklam plateau in Bhutan, sources have told India Today.

Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) of India and Pakistan are already connected through a hotline. The DGMOs of India and Pakistan talk to each other at least once a week to flag and sort out issues between the two armies who are deployed eye-ball to eye-ball along the Line of Control- the de-facto border between India and Pakistan.

The WMCC mechanism setup in 2012 by the Manmohan Singh government looks at "ways and means to strengthen exchanges and cooperation between military personnel and establishments" and explores "possibilities of cooperation in the border areas agreed upon by the two sides". The WMCC meeting is scheduled at the end of this month, sources said. The Indian delegation will be led by Joint Secretary (East Asia) and will have representation from the military operations wing of the Indian Army.

Along the 3,488 km long Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China, de-facto border, there are five Border-Personnel Meeting (BPM) points - Depsang in sub-sector north, Sappangur Gap in eastern Ladakh, Nathu La in Sikkim and Bumla and Kibithoo in Arunachal Pradesh.  These are used by local commanders to flag and sort out local issues and iron out differing perception of the border.

"The BPM are used to sort out immediate tactical level issues, there is need for a more strategic level interaction between the two armies for better understanding and cooperation," sources told India Today.

Also, DGMOs in their interaction are better placed to "reflect the broader thinking of respective governments paving way for better understanding," the source said.

The WMCC meeting also reflects that bilateral relations between India and China that had suffered a major setback because of the Doklam plateau stand-off  is now back on track. At the height of the Doklam stand-off Prime Minister Modi personally took up the issue with President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in Hamburg setting off hectic diplomatic negotiations leading to Doklam stand-off being resolved.

When India first unofficially presented its demand for a hotline connecting the army headquarters, Beijing gave a lukewarm response.

While China too is keen for more military to military exchanges, it wants hotlines to connect its Western Theater Command headquartered in Chengdu in the Sichuan province.