India, China Reach Agreement On Disengagement, Border Patrolling

New Delhi: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia for the BRICS summit, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on Monday announced that India and China have agreed to disengage and patrol along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the border areas.

During a special MEA briefing, the foreign secretary said, “Over the last few weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums and as a result of these discussions, an agreement has been arrived at on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border area, leading to disengagement and resolution.”

On a possible bilateral between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS, Misri said, “As far as the question on the bilateral meetings is concerned, this is a multilateral event, though there is always a provision for bilateral meetings on the sidelines. We are currently looking over the overall program of the prime minister. There are a lot of requests for bilateral meetings and we will update on the bilaterals as they evolve.”

Prime Minister Modi will attend the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan this week. He will pay a two-day visit to Kazan beginning Tuesday to attend the BRICS summit following an invitation by Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Friday, Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov said new members are expected to join BRICS and that this expansion would solidify the grouping as a significant platform for advancing the Global South’s interests. He said this during an online conference ‘BRICS 2.0: New Members, New Horizons’, ahead of the BRICS summit next week in Kazan, Russia. Russia is currently the Chair of BRICS, an important grouping that brings together major emerging economies of the world. It started as BRIC with four countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China, with South Africa joining the bloc in 2010, thus it later assumed the nomenclature of BRICS.

The grouping was further expanded last year. BRICS has become an influential platform for developing and emerging economies to take forward a rich agenda and to promote the democratisation of global governance “reflective of our growing influence”, the Russian envoy was quoted as saying in his keynote address at the conference.