New Delhi: The 7th round meeting of Corps Commanders of India and China is underway at Chushul on the Indian side on Monday to discuss ways for disengagement and deescalation at all the friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the eastern Ladakh.
Sources in the defence and security establishment have ruled out any possibility of troop presence being thinned during the winter. All steps, they added, will be mutual and “taken after proper verification process”.
This is the first round of talks after China raked up the 1959 claim line issue last week, which India has already rejected.
The Ministry of External Affairs last week rejected China’s attempt to project the 1959 claim line as the LAC, saying India has never accepted the “so-called unilaterally defined 1959 Line of Actual Control (LAC)”.
Today’s meeting will be the last involving 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen. Harinder Singh, who will then take over as the Commandant of the Indian Military Academy after handing over the charge to Lt Gen. P.G.K. Menon on October 14.
Participants will include Lt Gen. Menon and Joint Secretary (East Asia), Ministry of External Affairs, Naveen Srivastava.
The two were also present at the first India-China military-diplomatic meeting last month, which was held as tensions between the two sides continue to simmer at the border. That meeting ended in a stalemate.
