India and China have reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control “leading to the disengagement” of the two countries’ militaries in eastern Ladakh, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Monday.

“Over the last several weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said. “As a result of these discussions, an agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020.”

Misri added: “We will be taking the next steps on this”.

The statement came during a press conference concerning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia’s Kazan for the 16th BRICS summit between Tuesday and Thursday.

The foreign secretary did not provide more details about the agreement between India and China, nor did he clarify if their militaries had completed their disengagement from Ladakh.

Responding to a reporter’s question on whether the patrolling problem along the Line of Actual Control had been resolved or the broader military standoff between New Delhi and Beijing, Misri said that the discussions had in the past “resulted in the resolution of standoffs at various locations”.

“You’re also aware that there were a few areas and few locations where the standoff had not been resolved,” he said.

The agreement on patrolling, he reiterated, “is leading to disengagement and eventually the resolution of issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020”.

Misri did not confirm if Modi would meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

Following the announcement, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the agreement would mean that “we have gone back to the 2020 position”. “With that we can say the disengagement with China has been completed,” he said at an event organised by NDTV.

“There are areas, which for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them,” he said. “We have now reached an understanding, which will allow patrolling as we had been doing till 2020.”

The agreement is a “positive development” and its details will be made public “in due course”, Jaishankar added.

Border tensions between India and China escalated after June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Since the Galwan clashes, China and India have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In September, Jaishankar said that there had been 75% progress in the disengagement talks between India and China.