India will need to remain militarily vigilant on the ground if the planned de-escalation process with China moves forward in the coming months, senior Army officials were quoted by Times of India as saying.
Despite the ongoing thaw in relations, they cautioned that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has already built the kind of infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that allows its forces to return to forward positions at short notice.
“The way China has constructed roads, bridges, tunnels and permanent habitats across the LAC, from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh over the last five years, their troops can pull back 100–150 km and still reoccupy forward posts within two to three hours,” a senior Army officer said. “Our forces cannot do that. This mobilisation gap has to be taken into account in any de-escalation dialogue.”
So far, India and China have only agreed to begin discussions on the “principles and modalities” of de-escalation during Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit this week. On the ground, trust between the two militaries remains limited. Although both sides have pulled back from the immediate flashpoints at Depsang and Demchok since October, heavy forward deployment continues along the 3,488-km frontier.
“There is no disruption in coordinated patrolling at the disengaged sites,” another officer said, “but we cannot lower our guard, since the PLA’s preparedness and infrastructure buildup remain intact.” While some PLA combined arms brigades have moved around 100 km behind the LAC, several continue to stay forward deployed with tanks, artillery, armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missile units, and other weapons. Each brigade typically fields 4,500–5,000 troops.
Any eventual drawdown will require both sides to withdraw additional soldiers to their regular bases. In the meantime, India and China are relying on existing diplomatic and military mechanisms to keep the peace along the frontier.
Both countries have also agreed to establish new “general-level mechanisms” in the eastern sector (Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh) and middle sector (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh), supplementing the ongoing talks between the Indian 14 Corps commander and the South Xinjiang Military District chief in Ladakh. On India’s side, the meetings are likely to involve the Lt-General heading the Uttar Bharat Area in Bareilly for the middle sector, and the Lt-Generals commanding either 3 Corps in Dimapur or 4 Corps in Tezpur for the eastern sector.
In eastern Ladakh, the immediate focus will be restoring India’s patrolling rights in areas where “no-patrol buffer zones” were created after earlier disengagement rounds up to September 2022. These zones—ranging from 3 km to 10 km in places like Galwan, the north bank of Pangong Tso, the Kailash Range and parts of Gogra-Hot Springs—were meant to be temporary, but remain unresolved, according to officials.
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