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NEW DELHI: The Army on Friday released photographs of its soldiers playing cricket in the Galwan Valley area of eastern Ladakh to showcase ‘high morale’ along the frontier, a day after external affairs minister S Jaishankar described bilateral relations as “abnormal” during talks with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang on the sidelines of the G20 meeting.
“The photographs are from a location some distance away from the buffer zone set up around Patrolling Point-14 (PP-14). They basically depict the high morale of our jawans deployed in extreme high-altitude areas in sub-zero temperatures along the line of actual control,” an official said.
The photos, tweeted by the Leh-based 14 Corps, show troops from the ‘Patiala’ Brigade of the 3 Infantry ‘Trishul’ Division playing cricket in the forbidding terrain where people often suffer from acute oxygen deprivation.
The release of the photos also come ahead of the next round of corps commander-level talks between the two armies, which will soon take place after there was yet again no concrete breakthrough in the 17th round on December 20.
China has till now flatly refused troop disengagement at the strategically-located Depsang Plains and Demchok in eastern Ladakh, while also cranking up the pressure along the LAC in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Consequently, both sides continue to forward deploy over 50,000 troops each for the third successive harsh winter.
PP-14 in Galwan Valley was the site of the violent clash between the rival troops on June 15, 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers led by Colonel B Santosh Babu laid down their lives while fighting the numerically superior Chinese troops armed with nail-studded rods and other sharp weapons. China till now has not disclosed the actual number of its casualties, though it did later admit to losing a battalion commanding officer and three-four others.
In January last year also, the Army had released photographs of Indian soldiers armed with the latest SiG Sauer rifles flying the Tricolour at Galwan to counter Chinese propaganda, as was then reported by TOI.
“The photographs are from a location some distance away from the buffer zone set up around Patrolling Point-14 (PP-14). They basically depict the high morale of our jawans deployed in extreme high-altitude areas in sub-zero temperatures along the line of actual control,” an official said.
The photos, tweeted by the Leh-based 14 Corps, show troops from the ‘Patiala’ Brigade of the 3 Infantry ‘Trishul’ Division playing cricket in the forbidding terrain where people often suffer from acute oxygen deprivation.
The release of the photos also come ahead of the next round of corps commander-level talks between the two armies, which will soon take place after there was yet again no concrete breakthrough in the 17th round on December 20.
China has till now flatly refused troop disengagement at the strategically-located Depsang Plains and Demchok in eastern Ladakh, while also cranking up the pressure along the LAC in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Consequently, both sides continue to forward deploy over 50,000 troops each for the third successive harsh winter.
PP-14 in Galwan Valley was the site of the violent clash between the rival troops on June 15, 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers led by Colonel B Santosh Babu laid down their lives while fighting the numerically superior Chinese troops armed with nail-studded rods and other sharp weapons. China till now has not disclosed the actual number of its casualties, though it did later admit to losing a battalion commanding officer and three-four others.
In January last year also, the Army had released photographs of Indian soldiers armed with the latest SiG Sauer rifles flying the Tricolour at Galwan to counter Chinese propaganda, as was then reported by TOI.
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