Previous foreign secy Jaishankar confirmed report on heavy Chinese armoured presence near Doklam after the standoff ended.
New Delhi: There are more Indian troops circling the Doklam plateau than the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told a parliamentary committee on external affairs in February.
Gokhale’s submission on troop presence came long after the end of a 72-day standoff between the two countries in August last year.
“That entire arch around Doklam also has Indian troops. If I were to draw a circle, say, 25 km from Doklam, I will also be getting a lot of Indian military concentrations in the same arch….I do not want the committee to have a wrong impression that somewhere in the circle around Doklam, there are a lot of Chinese and there are no Indians… probably, there are more Indian troops than there are Chinese troops,” Gokhale was quoted as saying at a committee meeting on 22 February.
In their depositions to the Parliamentary panel, which is looking into Sino-Indian relations, including the Doklam standoff, top government officials also confirmed an exclusive report by ThePrint last year on the Chinese amassing troops near the Doklam plateau.
Also read: This is the first official account of the India-China face-off in Doklam
The report by Col. (retd) Vinayak Bhat — published on 26 October, 2017, nearly two months after the end of the face-off between India and China — said the military situation had not normalised as significant Chinese troop build-up continued in the region.
Col. Bhat was also called by the committee as a non-official witness.
The account is based on what top government officials told the committee. MPs privy to the draft report shared exclusive details with ThePrint.
The draft report titled “Sino-Indian Relations including Doklam, border situation and cooperation in international organisations”, was prepared by a parliamentary committee headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
What the foreign secretaries said
Asked about media reports — referring to ThePrint story — on heavy Chinese armoured presence in the vicinity of Doklam, then foreign secretary S. Jaishankar was quoted by an MP as having told the committee on October 30: “Vinayak Bhat is actually saying that there are Chinese tanks. There is some artillery. My understanding is, his article says that they are north of Yadong… a Chinese command post for 65 years…”
Jaishankar’s argument was that north of Yadong meant deeper into China and Tibet. Yadong, the command post directly north of Doklam, has been a Chinese garrison town for many years although India also had troops there at one point of time.
Also read: New trouble for India: China occupies North Doklam, with armoured vehicles & 7 helipads
“When India became independent, there was a Jat battalion stationed in Yadong and we unilaterally pulled back these troops as a goodwill gesture,” Jaishankar is quoted as saying. “So, if you were to say, here are the Chinese troops. What have we done to counter them? Now we can argue. History is history. We got what we have got.”
In an indirect confirmation of ThePrint story, he said the Chinese do both their summer exercises north of Yadong and there was a Chinese build-up during the Doklam period “but this is within China”. The face-off site is “clean”.
Jaishankar’s successor, Gokhale, was said to have informed the committee at a subsequent meeting, “It is a fact that the build-up is occurring across a large part of the India-China boundary and on both sides. So, even on our side, the status quo close to the boundary or close to what we consider the boundary is changing on a weekly and sometimes on a monthly basis. Our limited objective is that where that construction was taking place was within 100 metres of what we consider the India-Bhutan boundary…. Beyond that, if they are doing some activity, that is a matter for China and Bhutan to sort out.”