A senior Army officer said Depsang has not been raised with the Chinese so far as it is not a faceoff site, unlike the other four friction points on the LAC where disengagement is being discussed.
In the four rounds of meetings at the level of the Corps Commander, India has not raised the issue of Chinese ingress into the Depsang Plains in northern Ladakh, even though the area is more strategically important than the other ‘friction points' and the territory on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) being denied to Army patrols by the Chinese is much larger than at Pangong Tso.
This has raised concerns within a section of the security establishment that the continued Indian silence on Depsang could result in a new status quo being created in the strategically important area, where Chinese would have effectively shifted their actual control of the territory 18 km to the west. It would deny India access to a significant part of territory close to the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) airfield and bring the Chinese much closer to the strategic Darbuk-Shyok-DBO (DSDBO) road.
“Depsang is tactically and strategically far more important to us than the Pangong lake. It is critical for India's access to the Daulat…
