The external affairs ministry on Friday maintained that India and China had reaffirmed their commitment to exploring a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable framework for the settlement of the boundary question in accordance with the political parameters and guiding principles agreed to in 2005.

This partially confirms a reference Beijing made in its readout on the special representatives' meeting on Wednesday.

The Indian readout on the talks had not mentioned the 2005 Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question, inked when the Congress-led UPA was in power. Neither did the external affairs ministry make any mention of the "six-point consensus" referred to in the Chinese readout.

While external affairs ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal confirmed that the 2005 agreement would remain the guiding principle for further talks on the boundary question, his refrain to repeated questions at the weekly briefing on the "six-point consensus" claimed by China was to direct such queries to the Chinese government.

Article 1 of the 2005 agreement clearly states that "the differences on the boundary question should not be allowed to affect the overall development of bilateral relations". This is something China had insisted on through the four years of tension since the Galwan clashes as India maintained that peace and tranquillity in the border areas under the 1993 agreement was essential for the bilateral relationship to remain on track.

Jaiswal also said that apart from discussing the framework for the settlement of the boundary question, the special representatives of India and China reviewed issues of peaceful border management comprehensively in the 23rd round of this mechanism that was activated for the first time after Galwan. The special representatives had last met five years ago, almost to the day, in 2019.

Jaiswal did not detail the issues that were reviewed on border management but his statement was at variance with the Chinese foreign ministry's claim of a consensus on fine-tuning the management rules for the border areas and strengthening confidence-building measures to achieve sustainable peace and stability along the border.