Pangong Tso ‘done’, India to raise Depsang at next meet

(This story originally appeared in on Feb 12, 2021)

NEW DELHI: India will raise the issue of the strategically-located Depsang area in Ladakh with China in the next round of corps commander-level talks, amidst some concerns it may have squandered its major bargaining leverage by agreeing to vacate the Kailash range heights for just the Pangong Tso disengagement pact.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said India and China have agreed to convene the next meeting of their senior commanders, within 48 hours after completing the disengagement in the Pangong Lake area, to “address and resolve all other remaining issues”.

Though Singh did not specify any particular area, officials said the Depsang Plains or Bulge area as well as other trouble-spots like Gogra-Hotsprings and Charding Ninglung Nallah (CNN) track junction in the Demchok sector will now be taken up with China in the subsequent rounds of military talks.

“The present disengagement pact was limited to the north and south banks of Pangong Tso. Depsang is an old issue…Indian Army has not had access to large chunks of territory in Depsang for the last 10-15 years,” said a senior official.

“The situation in Depsang turned serious after the deep incursion there by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 2013. The Indian response then further hardened the PLA stance. But unlike Pangong Tso, Galwan and other friction points of last year, there was no major flare-up in Depsang. So, it was decided that Depsang would be dealt with separately from last year’s flashpoints,” he added.

The fact, however, remains the PLA since April-May last year has been actively blocking Indian soldiers from even going to their traditional Patrolling Points (PPs)-10, 11, 12, 12A and 13 in Depsang, a table-top plateau located at an altitude of 16,000-feet.

The rival armies also deployed additional infantry brigades and tank regiments in the Depsang region, which provides India access to the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) airstrip and the critical Karakoram Pass in the north, after tensions erupted in eastern Ladakh last year.

“PLA picks up the movement of our patrols through sensors and other means to block them from going beyond the `Bottleneck’ or `Y-junction’ area in Depsang (around 18-km inside what India perceives to be its territory),” said a source.

Some in the security establishment contend India should have linked the withdrawal of its troops from the tactically-advantageous heights they occupied on the south bank of Pangong Tso-Kailash range of mountains in Chushul sector in end-August to extract concessions from China in Depsang, where it claims as much as 972 square km of territory.

“There is the distinct possibility that China will not budge from it stand on Depsang unless India has more cards to play. India’s vital Sub-Sector North (SSN), which includes Depsang and the DBO airstrip, is quite near China’s critical Western Highway G-219, which connects Tibet to Xinjiang,” said another official.

The importance of SSN, the northernmost corner of eastern Ladakh, can also be gauged from the fact that it separates the Chinese-occupied Aksai Chin in the east from the Siachen Glacier in the west. “The Army has often war-gamed a westward thrust in the Depsang Plains by the PLA if full-fledged hostilities break out,” he added.