India will not allow any unilateral attempt by China to change the status quo or alter the Line of Actual Control (LAC), External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, while asserting that through an enormous logistical effort, the country had countered the Chinese in eastern Ladakh.
Talking about the eastern Ladakh border row, Jaishankar said China, in violation of the 1993 and 1996 agreements not to mass troops on the LAC, chose to do so, and added that its attempt was obviously to unilaterally change the LAC.
“Even though we were in the midst of COVID-19 at that time, through an enormous logistical effort, which I think sometimes has not been adequately recognised by people, by analysts, even in our politics in this country, we were actually able to counter them at the LAC,” Jaishankar said at a town hall organised by CNN-News18.
Elaborating on the row, he said some people have a simplistic idea of the border and one does not typically deploy at the patrolling point and that troops are in depth areas.
“What has happened as a result of this is because they (China) had forward deployments which were new and we counter-deployed, we also had forward deployments. You ended up with a very sort of intricate mix…which was very dangerous because they were too proximate, the rules of engagement were not being observed and then, exactly what we apprehended happened at Galwan two years ago. It became violent and there were casualties,” Jaishankar said.
With inputs from NDTV
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