New Delhi: China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has carried out its first patrol in the Depsang Plains, according to the mutually agreed terms of the disengagement agreement signed between the two countries last month, ThePrint has learnt.
Sources in the defence and security establishment told ThePrint that a group of Chinese troops carried out its patrol on Monday.
The sources said that according to the agreement, the Chinese troops crossed the bottleneck area till the point they used to come in earlier. They said the PLA would usually cross the bottleneck but was stopped immediately after.
The sources said that the Chinese claim line lies much beyond where the PLA patrolled Monday. The Chinese claim lines, they said, come just short of Burtse.
“Both sides have claim lines and then both sides have their limits of patrolling and then Patrolling Points. Our first Patrol went to PP 10, and their patrol came to their traditional point,” a source explained.
The sources said the patrolling happened according to the schedule and understanding the two countries have reached. Just as Indian troops informed the Chinese when they went for their patrol, the PLA, they said, first informed the Indian Army, as well.
India conducted its first patrol in the Depsang plains on 4 November, nearly two weeks after it signed a disengagement agreement on 22 October.
As reported by ThePrint on 30 October, India and China disengaged from the two face-off points of the Depsang plains and Demchok in eastern Ladakh, pulling back troops to the pre-2020 positions and also dismantling all check posts, defensive positions and housing and shelters created in the past four and a half years.
Both countries conducted “physical verification” of each other’s pullout, breaking down all additional structures created since 2020 in the Depsang plains and Demchok.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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