Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Tuesday said India “wants restoration of the pre-April 2020 status quo in eastern Ladakh” and added the situation along the China frontier was “stable” but “sensitive and not normal”.

General Dwivedi’s emphasis on the restoration of the pre-April 2020 status quo appears to contradict Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that nobody had intruded or was occupying Indian territory — “Na wahan koi ghusa hai, na koi ghus aaya hai, na hi ghusa hua hai.”

“It’s stable, but it’s not normal and it’s sensitive. We want the situation that was there pre-April 2020 to be restored, whether in terms of the ground occupation situation or the buffer zones which have been created or patrolling which have been kind of planned as of now,” the army chief said while replying to a specific question whether China is the biggest security challenge for India and how he assesses the situation on the frontier given the massive troop deployment and prevailing tension.

“So till the time that situation is not restored, as far as we are concerned, the situation will remain sensitive and we are fully operationally prepared to face any kind of contingency.... Trust has become the biggest casualty,” he said.

Gen. Dwivedi was speaking at a curtain raiser event on the Chanakya Defence Dialogue in the national capital.

He said though “positive signalling” was coming out of the diplomatic talks between the two sides on the resolution of the border standoff since early May 2020, the execution of any plan “depends on the military commanders on the ground”.

“As far as China is concerned, it has been intriguing our minds for quite some time…. And I keep saying with China, you have to compete, cooperate, coexist, confront and contest...” the army chief said.

He added: “The positive signalling is coming from the diplomatic side. What we have to understand is that the diplomatic side gives you the options and possibilities but when it comes to the execution on the ground it is dependent on the military commanders of both sides to take those decisions.”

India and China held two rounds of diplomatic talks in July and August to find an early resolution of outstanding issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.

The government has claimed that “India has not lost an inch of territory to China”.

Four days after the June 15, 2020, clash in the Galwan Valley in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed, Modi had come out with his “no-intrusion” statement, allowing Beijing to deny any border transgressions and claim ownership of all the territory it held in
the region.

So far there have been 21 rounds of military talks between the two armies to try and resolve the border standoff. Overall, the Chinese army is estimated to have taken over close to 1,000sqkm of India-claimed territory in Ladakh following multiple incursions in May 2020.