External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday said the patrolling arrangements pact between India and China would help a return of the situation that existed in border areas before April- May 2020. During an interaction at the NDTV World Summit, he said the agreement between the two sides was a “positive and good” development.

“What Foreign Secretary (Vikram Misri) has said is what I can also say, that we reached an agreement on patrolling and with that we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020. We can say that the disengagement process with China has been completed…There are areas which for various reasons after 2020 because they had blocked us so we had blocked them. So what has happened is we have reached an understanding which will allow the patrolling,” he said.

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“I think the understanding to my knowledge is that we will be able to do the patrolling which we were doing in 2020. I think it’s a good development. It’s a positive development and I would say it’s a product of very patient and very persevering diplomacy. We’ve been negotiating since September 2020, when I met my counterpart Wang Yi, in Moscow at that time…I think it creates a basis that peace and tranquility, which there should be in the border areas, which there was before 2020, we will be able to come back to that,” the minister added.