LEAD

India and China failed to make headway on resolving the ongoing military stand-off at Eastern Ladakh at the 13th round of talks held between their Corps Commanders, putting a big question mark over the disengagement process.

It is learnt that the Chinese side bluntly refused to disengage from the Hot Springs area, Depsang Plains and Demchok areas, as proposed by the Indian side.

”During the meeting, the Indian side made constructive suggestions for resolving the remaining areas but the Chinese side was not agreeable and also could not provide any forward-looking proposals. The meeting thus did not result in resolution of the remaining areas,” said a statement issued today by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on the talks held at the Chushul-Moldo border yesterday.

The Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Sunday held talks to resolve problems at frictions points on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh where the countries have been locked in a border standoff for over 17 months, officials familiar with the developments said on Sunday.

The 13th round of talks between corps commander-ranked officers from the two armies began at 10.30 am at Moldo on the Chinese side of the LAC and got over at 7.00 pm, the officials said. It came more than two months after the last round of talks that led to disengagement of forward deployed troops from Gogra or Patrol Point-17A, which was one of the flashpoints on LAC, in early August.

New Delhi: Union Minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra was arrested on Saturday after being questioned for nearly 12 hours by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Uttar Pradesh Police in alleged connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri violence on October 3. Ashish Mishra appeared before the SIT at around 10.30 am after a second summons was served to him the previous day when he did not turn up for interrogation.

Speaking on the arrest, DIG Upendra Agarwal, who led the SIT, said, “We are taking Ashish Mishra in custody. He was not cooperating in the investigation."

This comes a day after the Supreme Court expressed dissatisfaction over the Uttar Pradesh government’s action in the case. A day after no-show, and following the Supreme Court nudge, Union minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra alias Monu bhaiyya appeared before the Uttar Pradesh police in Lakhimpur Kheri on Saturday. Sources in the police said that Ashish was quizzed on four points.

There was a minor face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers near Yangtse in Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh last week, which got diffused after a few hours as per established protocols and mechanisms following talks between the local commanders.

The “physical engagement” took place after over 100 Chinese soldiers intruded into what India considers to be its territory around 10 days ago, which led both sides to rush some reinforcements to the area.

“The standoff took place because the two sides were patrolling to their own perceptions of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which is not demarcated and has overlapping claims, and came face-to-face on that day. The face-off lasted for a few hours before the disengagement took place. There was no damage to our defence or bunkers,” said a source.

BJP on Thursday dropped Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, the mother son-duo of Maneka and Varun Gandhi and former Bajrang Dal firebrand Vinay Katiyar from the party’s national executive, in what is seen as a loud assertion of the leadership’s authority.

The exclusion of Swamy and Varun as well as that of Birendra Singh, a prominent induction from Congress post-2014, was seen in the context of them being at odds with the party’s stance: both had strayed from the official line to criticise the Centre’s response to protests against the three contentious farm laws.

Bengal has found a significant representation with Nadda bringing Mithun Chakraborty, Bharti Ghosh, Swapan Dasgupta, Anirban Ganguly and Mukutmani Adhikari to figure among members of the body, in what is a clear indication that the party continues to look the state as land of promise despite the setback it suffered in the polls this May.