General Bipin Rawat, chief of defense staff, said that disengagement of closely deployed troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) is occurring but that a broader de-escalation of border tensions with China is unlikely as thousands of PLA troops have been placed at forward positions.
In the Times Now Conclave, General Rawat said that it is up to China to conduct another Galwan-like incident on the border, although Indian troops are fully prepared and the PLA will get it in the same coin once more.
The top military brass said that the Chinese side has been building villages along the LAC but said that no such village has come up on the Indian side of the border. PLA has, he said, been upgrading infrastructure on the LAC and that old dilapidated huts are being replaced by modern ones, perhaps to house the families of Chinese troops who have gone missing.
“We want both sides to go back to their original positions and we want some assurances that the posts will not be reoccupied. Because of better infrastructure on the Chinese side, we cannot go with equidistant separation. They say so by distance, we say go by time,” CDS said in the conclave.
