Rajnath Singh to visit Ladakh, meet soldiers

Amid the ongoing tension at borders with China, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit the eastern Ladakh region to interact with soldiers deployed in the hostile border area.

The Defence Minister will fly from Delhi to Leh on July 17 and interact with soldiers injured in the barbaric attack carried out by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on June 15. In the attack, India had lost 20 soldiers and the Chinese Army, too, had casualties, the figures still unknown.

Rajnath Singh will also visit the forward locations where Indian troops are deployed. He will be accompanied by Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane.

Singh, earlier on July 3, had planned to visit Leh, however, he had to drop it as Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to visit the forward location in eastern Ladakh.

Currently, both India and China are engaged in military and diplomatic deliberation to de-escalate the tense situation at the border areas. The countries are locked in ten week long standoff at multiple points, hitherto unprecedented along the border.

On Tuesday, the military delegates of both countries held deliberations about disengagement and de-escalation of troops and materials at the borders in eastern Ladakh for 15 long hours.

The talks started at 11:30 am on Tuesday and ended up at 2 am on Wednesday. The Indian delegates asked the Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops to completely withdraw from Pangong Lake and Depsang.

The meeting between 14 Corps commander Lieutenant-General Harinder Singh and South Xinjiang Military District Chief Major General Liu Lin is happening on the lines of the one they held at the Chushul-Moldo border personnel meeting (BPM) point in eastern Ladakh on June 6.

This is the fourth meeting between the delegates. The third meeting between the two delegates continued for almost 12 hours, wherein India had put a strong message to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops that they had not abided by the disengagement consensus.

Also, on June 22, Rajnath Singh had gone to Russia for three days to carry out strategic business talks and also to attend the Victory Day Parade at Red Square in Moscow to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Victory of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The Defence Minister had said the India-Russia bilateral relationship was a special and privileged strategic partnership, the future of which remains strong. He reviewed India’s defence relationship in a meeting with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov.

Russia had assured India that ongoing defence contracts would not be just maintained but in a number of cases, it would be taken forward in a shorter time. IANS