An army convoy moves along the Srinagar- Leh highway leading to Ladakh in Kashmir’s Ganderbal district. (Express photo by Shuaib Masoodi)
India-China Border Face-off Latest News Live Updates: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar Thursday said that the Indian Army soldiers had carried arms but followed protocols to not use them during the violent faceoff with Chinese troops in the Galwan valley of Ladakh. Responding to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s tweet asking why Indian soldiers were sent “unarmed to martyrdom” in Ladakh, Jaishankar said, “All troops on border duty always carry arms, especially when leaving post. Those at Galwan on 15 June did so. Long-standing practice (as per 1996 & 2005 agreements) not to use firearms during faceoffs.”
Meanwhile, the third round of Major General-level talks between India and China is currently underway. Yesterday’s meeting had ended on an inconclusive note. Aside from reconciling certain aspects related to the violent showdown, the other major item on the agenda will be the restoration of the status quo ante in the area, in line with decisions taken at the June 6 meeting of Corps Commanders at the Chushul-Moldo border point.
Taking a strong exception to China claiming sovereignty over the Galwan Valley, India had said that Bejing’s “exaggerated and untenable claims” are contrary to the understanding reached on the issue between the two sides. During a phone call with his Chinese counterpart, Jaishankar had said that Beijing had taken “pre-meditated and planned action” that was “directly responsible” for the violence and casualties. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also said India wants peace but “will give a befitting reply” if provoked.
In the worst flare-up on the Line of Actual Control in more than five decades, 20 Indian Army personnel, including the commanding officer of 16 Bihar, were killed Monday night in the Galwan valley of Ladakh where disengagement of troops on either side was underway. This is the first time in the last 45 years that Indian or Chinese troops have been killed on the LAC. In 1975, an Indian patrol was ambushed by the Chinese in Arunachal Pradesh.
Indian army soldiers rest next to artillery guns at a makeshift transit camp before heading to Ladakh, near Baltal, southeast of Srinagar. (Reuters)
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava is addressing a press conference on the developments in Ladakh.
Responding to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's tweet asking why Indian soldiers were sent 'unarmed to martydom' in Ladakh, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, 'All troops on border duty always carry arms, especially when leaving post. Those at Galwan on 15 June did so. Long-standing practice (as per 1996 & 2005 agreements) not to use firearms during faceoffs.'
In the reporting on the LAC stand-off, the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DSDBO) road has often appeared. What is this all-weather road built by India over nearly 20 years, and why does it matter? Of the possible triggers cited for the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) targeting of Indian territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, the construction of the 255-km long DSDBO all-weather road is possibly the most consequential.
The 20 soldiers who died came from 11 states. While CO, Col B Santosh Babu, was from Telangana, the others came from Bihar, UP, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It was India fighting back. Read more here
As the two countries are still talking at military and diplomatic levels, any escalation into a major conflict looks some distance away at this moment.
But conflict situations have a dynamic of their own, and events can overtake the best laid plans. A military conflict, if it occurs, can be localised to one area, can be along the whole border, or can be in any one sector. But unless there is another provocation and crisis, the two sides should be able to resolve the situation peacefully.
That said, the government will place the armed forces on full alert, moving some of them forward for an early response in case of any eventuality. Simultaneously, it will continue to use diplomatic channels to resolve the crisis, while controlling the domestic messaging to avoid inflaming public emotions that can create pressure on it to act strongly against China. The execution of that strategy will determine the course of the future action on China.
Ever since the standoff between the Indian and Chinese forces at Galwan on the intervening night of June 15 and 16, television channels have been rife with the term ‘hand-to-hand combat’ or “gutham-gutha” as commentators described the violent skirmishes between the two forces. What this means for the armed forces? Read our explainer here
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday accused the government of adopting a weak strategy and kneeling down before China by "handing over" a rail contract to a Chinese firm. She said the Centre should give a strong message to China. "20 of our soldiers have been martyred. In such a situation, the central government should give a strong message, but the government has adopted a weak strategy of kneeling down by handing over the contract of Delhi-Meerut semi high-speed rail corridor to a Chinese company. All Indian companies are also competent to build this corridor," she said in a tweet in Hindi.
Since the time tensions have erupted on the Ladakh border, there have been reports of some scuffles between the soldiers of both the armies. At Pangong Tso on the intervening night of May 5/6, there was a major scuffle between the soldiers in which more than 70 Indian soldiers were injured. In most of these scuffles, the Chinese have used bats, clubs, sticks and stones to cause major injuries. In Monday’s clash, besides the use of these blunt objects to cause injuries, some soldiers, it has been learnt, could have been pushed into the fast-flowing Galwan river. Most of the deaths were due to injuries aggravated by the intense cold in the high-altitude area.
Not really. If such a large number of soldiers could be killed without firing a round, it means that these deaths were far more brutal than they would have been had guns and rifles been used. However, that it remained restricted to a physical brawl points to the fact that there was no escalation to a kinetic level — rifles, howitzers, rockets, missiles, and fighter jets. China and India are both nuclear powers, and any climbing up the escalation ladder is fraught. But it could be a hope hanging by a slender thread if the history between the two sides is any precedent to go by. Even at Nathu La, before the military engagement escalated to artillery guns and threats of fighter jets, there was a scuffle between the soldiers of the two armies on the border.
Yes, undoubtedly so.
This is the first time after the 1962 War that soldiers have died in clashes on the India-China border in Ladakh. Even otherwise, the last deaths on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were an ambush of an Assam Rifles patrol in Arunachal Pradesh by the Chinese in 1975. But the last real military engagement between the two armies was at Nathu La in Sikkim in 1967, in which 88 Indian soldiers lost their lives, and more than 300 Chinese soldiers were killed.
But all these incidents were prior to the two countries signing, starting from 1993, various agreements for maintaining peace and tranquility on the border. Moreover, at least 20 soldiers including a Commanding Officer lost their lives on a single day in Galwan on Monday. To put that number in context, when 19 soldiers lost their lives in Uri in 2016, the Narendra Modi government launched surgical strikes across the Line of Control.
On the faceoff, Rahul Gandhi today said, "Why were the men sent without any weapons. Who is responsible for this now?" Yesterday Gandhi had criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for remaining silent. "Why is the PM silent? Why is he hiding? Enough is enough. We need to know what has happened. How dare China kill our soldiers? How dare they take our land?" Gandhi had tweeted. He later posted a video giving his condolences to the Indian soldiers who died in the line of duty. He asked PM Modi to "come out" and "tell the truth". "Two days ago India lost 20 soldiers, they have been snatched away from their families. China has grabbed our land and occupied our territory. Why are you silent Pradhan Mantri ji? Where are you hiding? You come out, the entire country is standing with you. We are all with you. Come out and tell the truth, don't be scared," he said.
Between 1967 and 2020, China changed its tactics, not its goals. In the last four decades, China adopted the Sun Tzu formula of “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. It has resorted to area expansion and domination tactics using numerical superiority and military aggression. It continued to nibble away at our territories through aggressive patrolling and continuous border violations. In the last one decade, more than a thousand such border violations have been recorded. Read Ram Madhav's column in The Indian Express
After asking state-owned telecom companies BSNL and MTNL to rework their tenders for network upgradation to promote indigenous equipment makers, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is planning to ask private mobile companies to refrain from purchasing gear from Chinese vendors, according to senior government officials. The government has also asked the public sector telecom companies to not use Chinese vendors in their procurements. This is an extension to the directive by the Centre sent to the companies to last month asking them to rework their tenders for 4G network upgrade in a manner that promoted made-in-India gear in the core network infrastructure.
Havildar K Palani joined the Army when he was 18. His younger brother Idayakani, also in the Army, said Palani had struggled a lot in his childhood. His wife Vanathi Devi, 34, said Palani had called her two days before he was killed. “He said they were moving to the border area and that he may not be calling me for a few days. He said everything would be fine and that I shouldn’t worry about him,” she said. Devi lives with their two children — a daughter aged 8 and a son aged 10 — near Ramanathapuram. His father Kalimuthu told the media that Palani had built a house. “I used to ask him often to come back… He would say that he will retire soon. I thought since he had worked so long for the country, let him take his own time to return,” he said.
Sunil Kumar, from Taranagar village in Patna, joined the Army in 2002. His elder brother Anil Kumar, a retired Armyman, said: “Our worst fears came true with the news of his supreme sacrifice. As family of a soldier, there is a great sense of pride…” Kumar’s wife Rikki Devi said he had come home seven months ago. The couple has two sons and a daughter. Kumar’s father Basudev Singh runs a provision store in their village.
The BJP has decided to postpone all its political activities for the next two days as a mark of tribute to the 20 armymen killed in the faceoff. "The supreme sacrifice of our brave soldiers while guarding our motherland in Galwan valley will always be remembered. The nation is indebted to them. I pay homage to the martyrs. BJP has decided to postpone all its political programmes including virtual rallies for next 2 days," BJP chief JP Nadda tweeted.
20 Indian Army personnel, including the commanding officer of 16 Bihar, were killed Monday night in violent clashes with Chinese troops in the Galwan valley of Ladakh where disengagement of troops on either side was underway. The 20 soldiers who died came from 11 states. While CO, Col B Santosh Babu, was from Telangana, the others came from Bihar, UP, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It was India fighting back.
Twenty armymen were killed in the faceoff
Amid the border tensions, the first set of actions have been initiated against Chinese businesses in the country. A Chinese engineering major is set to lose a significant contract with the Indian Railways, and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has conveyed to state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) not to use Chinese-made equipment in its upgradation, top sources in both sectors said on Thursday.
Likewise, decks are being cleared to terminate the contract of the Chinese signalling behemoth China Railway Signal and Communication (CRSC) Corp., in the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor. CRSC had won the contract in 2016 to install signalling systems in over 400 km of railway lines. This is the only Chinese presence in the mega project, which is now keen to engage Indian players, officials said.
The principal political objective of the Indian statecraft today is to restore the status quo that prevailed in eastern Ladakh and elsewhere before China’s expansive forward push in April. A three-fold strategy is critical for the realisation of that goal. One is the political will to escalate the military confrontation if it becomes necessary; second is the closing of domestic ranks and the demonstration of national resolve to bear the economic and political costs of escalation; and finally, the commitment to a sustained dialogue to complete the process of disengagement that was agreed upon earlier this month. In short, Delhi’s message to domestic and international audiences must be a simple yet credible one — that India will do whatever it takes to restore the status quo ante on the northern frontiers. Read The Indian Express editorial here
In first public remarks on the death of 20 Indian Army personnel in violent clashes with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday said India wants peace but “will give a befitting reply” if provoked. Observing a two-minute silence in memory of the fallen soldiers before the start of his second meeting with Chief Ministers on the coronavirus crisis, Modi said: “Desh ko is baat ka garv hoga ki hamare sainik maarte maarte mare hain (The country will be proud of the fact that our soldiers have died fighting).”
These echo similar remarks by the Prime Minister after the terror attacks in Uri (2016) and Pulwama (2019), following which Indian forces crossed the Line of Control to strike at terror launch pads in Pakistan. While Modi did not refer to China directly in his remarks, the reference to Galwan Valley made it clear who he had in mind. He also referred to Delhi’s understanding with Beijing that differences should not become disputes.