Rajnath Singh meets AK Antony and Sharad Pawar, briefs them on Ladakh border row with China

NEW DELHI:  Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met Congress leader AK Antony and Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Friday and briefed them about the prevailing situation along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. 

Both Antony and Pawar were Defence Ministers. Sources in the defence ministry said: “CDS Gen Bipin Rawat and Indian Army Chief Gen MM Naravane were present during the briefing.” This meeting took place in New Delhi. It is viewed as an outreach initiative of the government before the Monsoon Session of Parliament starts on July 19. 

Recently, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi had walked out of a parliamentary standing committee meeting of defence ministry while demanding that it should discuss border issues, border tension with China even though they were not part of the agenda.

Gandhi has been alleging that India ceded land to China after the armies of the two countries clashed in Eastern Ladakh in May, 2020, which had led to stand-offs at multiple points. Even now, there are  more than 50,000 soldiers still deployed along the Line of Actual Control. 

This meeting between Rajnath and the two former Defence Ministers took place a day after Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met in Tajikistan during the Foreign Ministers’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a regional grouping of eight nations. The two ministers agreed that the resolution of the border situation be prioritised, as prolonging the existing situation was not in the interest of either country.