The new disengagement phase started on September 8 and took five days. According to NDTV broadcaster, citing sources familiar with the developments, the two sides have successfully disengaged as per plan from Patrolling Point 15.
The two nations have thousands of square kilometers of disputed borderlands between them, from the Ladakh region, which is triangulated with Pakistan's Kashmir claims, all the way to Arunachal Pradesh to the east of Bhutan. Border conflicts are a permanent fixture of India-China relations, as the countries do not have a marked border but rather the Line of Actual Control, created after the 1962 border war between the nations.
The tensions in Ladakh between China and India escalated in May 2020. Following several conflicts between the countries’ military units in the area of Pangong Lake, Beijing prompted New Delhi to increase its military presence on the border.
In an attempt to reduce tensions, New Delhi and Beijing launched disengagement consultations in early June 2020, with the first phase of disengagement on the northern and southern banks of Pangong Lake completed in February 2021. Since 2020, 16 rounds of talks have taken place, yielding mixed results.