What if China, Bhutan strike deal: Rahul to House panel
India’s diplomatic efforts paid off in the Doklam row, the government told a House panel on Thursday, even as the Centre said it was looking closely at engagements between China and Bhutan, parliamentary sources said.
According to people present at the meeting of the parliamentary panel on external affairs, Congress president Rahul Gandhi asked foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale about the possibilities of China and Bhutan making their own land-swapping deal, with Bhutan giving away crucial parts of Doklam to its northern neighbour. Gandhi wanted to know if New Delhi was aware of the engagements between China and Bhutan, to which the foreign secretary answered in the affirmative, but added that India did not see any possibility of such a land deal in the near future.
At the meeting on the ‘SinoIndia Relations including Doklam, border situation and cooperation in international organisations’, the panel invited retired army chief General Deepak Kapoor, former diplomat Nalin Surie and retired Colonel Vinayak Bhat to give evidence on the issue.
Members such as Md Salim of the CPI(M) pointed to media reports on the construction work carried out by the Chinese military in the Doklam area, which witnessed a 73-day standoff between India and China.
According to members at the meeting, government officials pointed out that the constructions were not happening in the disputed area but in the Chinese territory. “We are aware of the developments but our diplomatic efforts have paid off. After July 2017, no standoff has taken place in Doklam,” they said.
Indian experts said a Doklam- like situation along the Sikkim border was likely to be the new normal, a defence think tank has observed, making a strong case for building military capabilities as China respects strength.
In a new paper titled Looking Beyond Doklam, the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS), a think tank set up by the defence ministry a decade ago, said it was crucial for India to demonstrate strength as peace along the disputed border or Line of Actual Control (LAC) would be “constantly and continuously” under stress with “increase in frequency, intensity and depth of (Chinese) transgressions leading to more and more standoffs”, the foreign ministry told the panel.
Last year, China had accused India of trespassing and preventing its troops from building a road in the remote Himalayan plateau that is claimed by both China and Bhutan. The standoff ended with withdrawal of troops and China removing road-building equipment. “Doklam was definitely different from Chumar (2014) and Depsang (2013), as China resorted to an information war, exploiting both the Chinese media and also investing in the Indian media,” CENJOWS director Lieutenant General (retd) Vinod Bhatia wrote in the paper.
Bhatia was the director general of military operations when India and China were locked in a tense border standoff at Depsang in Ladakh four years ago.