File photo of Congress leader Jairam Ramesh
| Photo Credit: PTI

Questioning the timing of the announcement to ease relations between India and China, the Congress on Tuesday claimed that the “Prime Minister’s cronies and friends” would be the beneficiaries of the “so-called normalisation while critical areas are off-limits to our troops”.

In a statement, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh posed some key questions to the government on ties with China and asked whether the status quo was restored as of May 2020 at the border in eastern Ladakh. He said there were still many unanswered questions about the disengagement agreement of October 21, 2024, and it was still unclear if Indian troops could access areas that had become out of bounds post May 2020.

The party’s statement came a day after New Delhi and Beijing agreed to restore commercial and cultural ties, including bringing back direct flights between the two capitals, resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, liberalised visa regime and other measures following the recent Beijing visit of the Foreign Secretary.

“The Modi government has not yet satisfactorily explained to the country why this is the right time to normalise relations with China. Ever since the Chinese occupied 2,000 sq km of territory in eastern Ladakh that had been accessed by Indian patrols until May 2020, the people and the Armed Forces of the country have held that the Government of India must insist on a restoration of the status quo ante as it stood prior to that,” Mr. Ramesh said in his statement.

Quoting Army Chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi, who had remarked, “We want to go back to the status quo of April 2020… thereafter we will be looking at disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of the LAC,” Mr. Ramesh said: “Yet successive statements by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) casts doubt on whether we have returned to the status quo.”

He also recalled External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s statement in Parliament on December 3, 2024, that “in a few other places where friction occurred in 2020, temporary and limited measures were implemented, based on local conditions, to prevent further friction”.

The Congress leader added that this alluded to the creation of “buffer zones”, areas where Indian troops and local graziers were restricted from accessing; such “seemingly one-sided concessions” were unlike previous confrontations, including Sudorong Chu in 1986 and Depsang in 2013 that ended after the complete restoration of the status quo.

“Even as critical areas appear off-limits to our troops, this so-called normalisation will only amplify the trends whose only beneficiaries appear to be the Prime Minister’s cronies and financiers,” the Congress leader said.

Instead of reducing our dependence on China, Mr. Ramesh argued, the Narendra Modi government has allowed Chinese exports to India to jump from USD 70 billion in 2018-19 to a record USD 102 billion in 2023-24. While Indian exports stagnate, China has emerged as the top supplier to critical industrial sectors like electronics, machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and textiles, he said.

Restating their earlier questions, the Congress leader asked if Indian troops would be able to “patrol up to our claim line in Depsang to five patrolling points past the Bottleneck junction as they were able to earlier?”

Would Indian troops be able to reach the three patrolling points in Demchok that have remained out of bounds for more than four years and would Indian soldiers continue to be restricted to Finger 3 in Pangong Tso when earlier they could go as far as Finger 8, he asked. Would Indian patrol also be permitted to access the three patrolling points in the Gogra-Hot Springs area that they could earlier go up to, he added.

“Will Indian graziers once again be given the right to access traditional grazing grounds in Helmet Top, Mukpa Re, Rezang La, Rinchen La, Table Top and Gurung Hill in Chushul? Are the “buffer zones” that our government ceded to the Chinese, which included the site of a memorial in Rezang La to war hero and posthumous Param Vir Chakra awardee Major Shaitan Singh, now a thing of the past,” Mr. Ramesh said.