External affairs minister S. Jaishankar has clarified his statement about 75 per cent of the border dispute with China being resolved, saying he referred specifically to the “disengagement” aspect in eastern Ladakh.

Speaking at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York on Tuesday, Jaishankar said India has had a “difficult history” with China.

“When I said 75 per cent of it has been sorted out, it’s only of the disengagement. So, that’s one part of the problem,” he said, adding that challenges remained in other areas of the dispute.

Earlier this month, the foreign minister had said India had made progress in its border negotiations with China and about 75 per cent of the “disengagement problems” had been “sorted out”, but the “bigger issue” had been the increasing militarisation of the border.

Some veterans had questioned his remarks, saying it gave the impression that India had accepted those “buffer zones” created inside India-claimed lines as part of the disengagement agreement between India and China.

As part of the disengagement agreements in Ladakh, Indian and Chinese troops have retreated by equal distances from the flashpoints at the Galwan Valley, Pangong Lake, Hot Springs and Gogra, leaving demilitarised buffer zones in between.

According to the veterans, this means the Chinese still remain within the India-claimed lines they have transgressed while India has given up control over more territory that it claims as its own.

Military veterans fear that China plans to turn the buffer zones into “a new status quo” and will not go back to the April 2020 status quo.

The Indian and Chinese armies have been locked in standoffs at multiple points in eastern Ladakh since May 2020. The Chinese are said to be entrenched up to 18km inside India-claimed lines at Depsang Plains and to have taken over close to 1,000sqkm of India-claimed territory.

“We have a difficult history with China.... Despite the explicit agreements we had with China, we saw in the middle of Covid that the Chinese moved a large number of forces in violation of these agreements to the Line of Actual Control (LAC). It was likely a mishap would happen, and it did happen. So, there was a clash, and several troops died on either side. That, in a sense, overshadowed the relationship,” Jaishankar said on Tuesday.

He said the patrolling arrangement along the frontier had been disturbed after 2020. “Some of the patrolling issues need to be resolved. The next step will be de-escalation.”