LAC current situation was the prominent talk of the recently concluded Home Ministry’s DGP/IGP conference. It was conducted by the home minister and was also attended by PM Modi and Mr. Doval who is his national security advisor. It has been established in the conference that china has pushed its border into the Indian Territory by putting its buffer zones and thus Indian soldiers can’t enter the buffer areas. China has buffered 26 of 65 patrolling points and restricted entry of Indian soldiers in those areas of eastern Ladakh. This has affected the movement of the locals, graziers for they are not able to work on their taken-over fields and they are unable to work on those grazing grounds. The following Independence Day, our boundary with Tibet was undisputed and undefined. This was made into a complex situation after the annexation of Tibet by China in 1949. It was in 1959, Nehru rejected the idea of LAC on the Tibet-India border, and the idea was shared with him by then Premier Zhau Enlai. It was only in 1993, the same was agreed upon by both sides and both sides agreed to a clause that stated that both sides will agree on the clause that both the sides agree to reference the line of actual control that there is no prejudice on the boundary in question and that no one from either side shall overstep the line of actual control. It is due to the difficult terrain it is not possible to establish and maintain check posts all along the LAC, thus is easier for trespassing for its only national line and not actually delineated on the ground. Since forward troops need specific areas for guarding, the china study group has marked patrolling points on which troops would patrol on a regular frequency in a day. China study group is an informal official committee of their inter-ministerial level personnel. It was formed in 1970 and currently lead by NSA. The designated patrolling points give a more realistic picture than the line on the agreement paper. The situation now is very different from when the agreement was signed. In 2020 China has pushed us back from one-third of the territory of Eastern Ladakh that was under India’s control. It is definitely a loss for India, for that part was a sovereign part of the Indian territory and it was completely false of the Prime minister to say that China has not intruded and taken over any part of eastern Ladakh. But what was surprising is that the military was quiet to such a false statement. It was nothing new that other ministers and bureaucrats went along with this fictional statement and could not hold out the truth. Well, to say the least, putting such a false picture in front of a nation says a lot about their integrity as a leader. While we don’t have much expectation from our leaders but our military has also fallen part of the bandwagon is tragic. What raises concern will the citizens of India will live in a façade that all is well at the India-Tibet border? What about the people of Tibet who lost a part of their lands to the Chinese military after they have taken over their fields under their LAC and who will be held accountable for those losses? Why border management is so diffused is also another cause of concern. Isn’t it the responsibility of the Indian army to defend the nation against external adversaries, but in the given situation, the Indo –Tibetan border police is answerable directly to Delhi but the coordination is left to individual heads of ITBP and the Indian army. Ideally, the same shall be institutionalised and a team on either side should be made to communicate the matters to each other. The Central Armed Police Forces is a double army in size. The need to have such a large armed force under the Ministry of Home Affairs only hints that the political establishment is afraid of being disposed of as it has happened in the past too. But this is not how the Indian military works, in this case, its tradition and work model have been interfered with. It’s tarnished and now the new recruitment pattern will add to the pain. Well, it is quite odd for a prime minister’s office to hear and not react to the news of a junior police officer sitting 200km from the LAC with no specialised skills for combat at high altitude inferring that we were pushed back because we could not withstand some gunshots or maybe let the terrain and weather dominate the spirit of our force? Police are responsible for maintaining law and order in a secure state, they are not meant to be put up on the high altitude LAC. Had it been our especially skilled army, things would have been starkly different. INAV
