The government has said “making exaggerated and untenable claims” on areas along the Line of Actual Control or LAC is against the understanding that military commanders of India and China had reached during a meeting on June 6. Soldiers of both nations were involved in a violent face-off at Galwan valley in Ladakh on Monday night, with both sides taking casualties.
Chinese soldiers took “pre-meditated and planned action” that was directly responsible for Monday’s clash at Galwan valley, in which 20 Indian soldiers died, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told his China counterpart Wang Yi in a phone conversation on Wednesday. During the meeting on June 6, Lieutenant General-level talks were held to end the stand-off at Pangong Tso and a number of other areas in eastern Ladakh. In the over four-and-a-half-hour meeting, Indian had pressed for restoration of status quo and immediate withdrawal of a sizeable number of Chinese troops from all the stand-off points.
On June 15, when a small Indian patrol moved to remove a Chinese tent at the Galwan river valley at 15,000 feet, a physical fight broke out after the Chinese soldiers targeted the Indian Colonel, BL Santosh Babu. They were attacked with batons and rods with nails. China had agreed to remove the tent after the talks on June 6.
