Hotline between armies: India, China to discuss issue during Defence Minister Wei Fenghe's visit

A hotline between the armies of India and China could be a possibility in order to avoid flare-ups along the disputed border during Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe's upcoming visit.

Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe. (File | AP)

NEW DELHI: A hotline between the armies of India and China could be a possibility as the two countries will attempt to resolve differences on the issue during Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe's upcoming visit later this month.

Both the countries had revived the long-pending proposal to set up the hotline so as to avoid flare-ups between the two militaries along their disputed border after the Wuhan summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in April.

Modi and Xi decided to issue "strategic guidance" to their militaries to strengthen communications and build trust. The move was seen as aimed at avoiding a Doklam-like standoff between the two militaries.

Sources said that the Indian Army has been maintaining that the hotline should be between its Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) and his equivalent official in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Beijing proposed that deputy commander of its Chengdu-based Western Theatre Command would engage with the Indian DGMO.

While, currently, India and Pakistan have a hotline between their DGMOs, it was first mooted between India and China in 2013.

Sources said that Chinese PLA has also conveyed to Indian Army that they do not have any DGMO in its headquarters and that it was favouring engaging the Western Theatre Command which looks after the Sino-India border.

However, the Indian side feels the protocol must be maintained and equating the Indian Army headquarters to PLA's Western Theatre Command in Chengdu was not proper.

On the proposed hotline, the official sources said there were certain issues relating to engaging translators for Mandarin and English and technical aspect of the hotline as well.

Three commands of the Indian Army, the Kolkata-based Eastern Command, the Central Command headquartered at Lucknow and the Northern Command, headquartered at Udhampur, have been tasked with keeping an eye on the nearly 3,500-km-long border with China.