As India and China continued the Corps Commander talks on January 24 to discuss the nine-month-long standoff on the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, a village leader from one of the boundary villages alleged that Chinese vehicles were managing Indian roads to access Indian territory.
Urgain Tsewang, village head of Koyul-Kakjung, one of the remotest villages in the Demchok area, shared a video dated December 16, 2020, where two Chinese vehicles are wheeled away by a crowd of locals and security personnel. In another video dated December 10, 2020, few Chinese commoners are seen taking pictures of the region, with their vehicles parked nearby. Mr. Urgain, who took the video, told that when the wanderers went for winter grazing this year, Chinese people urged them to leave the area.
“Recently, some villagers went there and saw the Chinese had invaded the Indian territory and had trespassed more than one kilometer from the boundary. We reached the officials who urged us to camp there and not withdraw even by an inch. We stood lookout for four to five days. The two Chinese vehicles came back again on December 16, but this time the SDM and ITBP officials were there, We expelled them away,” Mr. Urgain said. He said the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army personnel were scattered with civilians.
“The region where the Chinese are attempting to advance themselves is near to patrolling point 38. Our vagabonds have not been there for winter grazing for the past two years due to some illness in the cattle. We were horrified to discover the Chinese sauntering in our fields this time around. This has never happened. There are using roads constructed by India to trespass on our territory; we will not let this happen,” he said. He said the Chinese invasion could be caught red-handed as everything was taped on phones.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had notified Rajya Sabha last September that face-offs with the Chinese PLA occurred because “patrols were interrupted.” Mr. Singh had said there was no regularly outlined LAC and there was an overlay in the opinion of LAC in many regions. China has encroached about 8 km in the Finger area of Pangong Tso and Indian troops have not been capable to patrol beyond Finger 4 since the last week of April 2020, when China began accumulating troops. Earlier, Indian troops could patrol up to Finger 8. The other regions where buildup proceeds are the Depsang plains, Galway, Gogra-Hot Springs, and the south bank of Pangong.
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