India and China are in the final stage of setting up hotlines between their Armies on eastern and northern side of the divide to avoid any misunderstandings during the military patrols on the border. Eastern Command headquarters in Fort William, Kolkata, will have a dedicated telephone hotline with the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army headquarters in the Chengdu Military region, and the Northern Command headquarters in Udhampur with its counterpart in the Lanzhou Military Region. Presently, sector commanders of the Indian and Chinese armies do talk over the telephone and meet periodically at designated places along the border.
Chengdu and Lanzhou are two of seven Chinese PLA military regions and cover the entire border with India. On the Indian side, the Northern Command, Eastern Command and the Central Command share the responsibility for the frontier with China. The proposal for telephone hotlines was conveyed by Beijing during the visit of the Chinese defence minister Liang Guanglie to New Delhi in the first week of this month.
AIR correspondent reports, both sides acknowledge that despite the peace and tranquillity on the frontier, there is the likelihood of border patrols’ movements being misinterpreted and snowballing because the border is unsettled. The Indian and Chinese militaries are beefing up border defences, raising more troops and redeploying new units.
As recently as July, Indian and Chinese army patrols came face to face at Chumar in Ladakh. The patrols held up banners and flags to signal to each other that they were transgressing the Line of Actual Control. There was no face-off as the patrols moved on. There were more than 200 such transgressions in 2011. This year, the Indian army has listed 90 so far.
The Indian Army currently has a hotline only with Pakistan. The Directors Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs) of India and Pakistan talk over a dedicated line every Tuesday and usually after incidents of firing on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir where a ceasefire has been holding since 2002.
