The federal government must not accept de-escalate the situation at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh without an arrangement on returning to “ status quo ante” or the circumstance before the stand-off started, said specialists, who indicated the outcome of the Doklam stand-off in 2017 as a marker.
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” The lesson for us in Doklam is that disengagement is inadequate in order to declare an end to stress at the LAC. It is necessary that we specify end points up to where the troops need to withdraw to and no understanding must be reached without the restoration of status quo ante,” said Ashok Kantha, former Ambassador to China and the Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies.
Monday’s declaration
On Monday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) released a declaration detailing a telephone call in between National Security Consultant Ajit Doval and his Chinese interlocutor Foreign Minister Wang Yi over which it was decided to disengage and de-escalate the military mobilisation at Galwan Valley and other points of dispute in between the Indian Army and the Chinese Individuals’s Freedom Army (PLA) that has actually lasted more than 2 months. The three-paragraph statement issued was considerably longer than the MEA declaration released after the Doklam stand-off that lasted two-and-a-half months, from June 16- August 28, 2017.
At the time, the “Press declaration on Doklam disengagement understanding” had said only that the “expeditiou