RESTORATION OF PRE-MAY 2020 STATUS QUO WAS SINGLE-POINT AGENDA OF LAC TALKS
Indian policymakers believe that China lost the ‘first mover advantage’ after India successfully matched every man and machine and deployed ‘even more’ than what China had depolyed at the LAC, by the end of July.
It was on 24 January, two days before Republic Day on 26 January, that the fine points of the agreement on how and when to end the almost nine-monthlong India-china border stand-off were reached by the men representing India and China. However, the agreement was made public to Indian and global eyes by the Indian Army only on 10 February.
“The agreement was reached on 24 January, the document on the same was studied and vetted and agreed on by both the parties on 8 February and it was ‘executed’ on the morning of 10 February. We had one demand when we sat down for the first meeting with the Chinese
officials, ‘restoration of status quo to pre-may 2020’, and that has been achieved,” an official source privy to the developments told The Sunday Guardian.
While the jury is out on why the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) did what it did and with what intentions in the initial weeks of May 2020, when it entered the “grey areas” along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which led to the death of Indian officers and soldiers in Galwan on 15 June, official sources said that after the “dust settled”, India, in a display of “unprecedented” speed in moving men and machines towards the border, caught the PLA by surprise and followed it up by taking key heights in a swift action on the night of 29-30 August.
The Chinese realised that a situation of “stalemate” had been reached muchmuch earlier than they had expected.
“After this, it was all about patience and resolve. During the entire nine rounds of negotiations, our officials had only one agenda—restoration of status quo to pre-may 2020. The Chinese officials, as was expected, started by accusing our men of occupying their territory; talks then progressed on how we were trying to take away the ‘grey’ areas; then it moved to the Chinese offering to