Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 30

The meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Wuhan on April 27-28 could result in “coordinated patrolling” and “sticking to mandated protocol” along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) by troops of either side.Aimed at reducing tension along the LAC, these two steps along with the setting up of a telephonic hotline at the level of Director-General Military Operations (DGMO) could form the new set of rules for troops on either side of the LAC, the de facto boundary along the Himalayan ridgeline.An Indian statement from Wuhan said the two leaders asked the militaries to build “trust” and have a mechanism to “prevent” incidents in the border regions. It further spoke of enhancing predictability and effectiveness in the management of border affairs.A coordinated patrol would mean giving advance information to one another when patrol parties enter disputed areas along the LAC.The LAC is not marked on the ground and troops of either country patrol up to a point which they perceive as the alignment of the LAC. Perceptions vary by a few kilometres in eastern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.The other step could be “sticking to protocol” along the LAC. As of now, whenever either side perceives that a transgression  (entry of troops into a disputed area) has been made, soldiers show a banner to one another citing the 2005 agreement and says there is a need to back off from the present positions of patrolling.The “banner drill” is framed under the “protocol on modalities for implementation of CBMs in the military field along the LAC in the India-China border areas”. It is part of a protocol agreed upon to de-escalate momentary transgressions.The matter of setting up a DGMO-level hotline was revived at a meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs in Beijing in November last year. The two sides have coordinated on how to have a Mandarin-to-English translator in India and the reverse of it in China.