So, a question arises – if the Chinese were building a road in the Doklam plateau on the China-Bhutan border, how did the Indian Army stop their work? And how does the boundary tri-junction area and Dhoka La come into the picture?

Bhutan-China border dispute

As per the Royal Government of Bhutan (RGOB), there are four areas of boundary-alignment dispute between China and Bhutan. However, as per the Chinese, there are seven such areas of boundary dispute. It is this mismatch in the number and extent of disputed areas which has led to the present stand-off.

I’m not getting into the entire Bhutan-China boundary issue, but will restrict myself to the current area of conflict.

As per the statement of the King of Bhutan in the National Assembly, there are four areas under dispute:

1. Up to 89 sq km in Doklam are under dispute (along Gamochen at the border, to the river divide at Batangla and Sinchela, and down to the Amo Chhu River)

2. Approximately 180 sq km in Sinchulumpa and Gieu are under dispute. The border line stretches from Langmarpo Zam along the river up to Docherimchang, through the river divide to Gomla, along the river divide to Pangkala, and finally down to the Dramana River.

3. Starting from Dramana, along the border line up to Zingula, and along the line of river divide down to Gieu Chhu River, and finally to Lungkala

4. Starting from the middle of Pasamlum, along the border-line and the river divide to Dompala and Neula, going from Neula along the border line and the river divide to Kurichhu Tshozam, along the river divide to Genla then to Mela, and go all the way to the east

Point (1) above is centred along and east of the India-Bhutan-China boundary tri-junction area. Point (2) refers to the area marked as Doklam plateau on Google Earth and shows as disputed with a broken line. As per the RGOB, there is no contiguity between areas covered under points (1) and (2) while Chinese claim an intermediate area as well. This makes the Chinese claims much larger than the Bhutanese interpretation and the root cause of the present conflict.

I’ve not been able to access any corresponding maps from the RGOB which show the alignment of the above area. As Joshi writes in his Indian Express article, “However, none of these features are visible on publicly available maps and it requires an effort to locate them.” I’ve created some indicative maps after searching through multiple sources and will come to that shortly.

And while I could not find any RGOB map showing disputed areas, I did come across a Chinese map which shows the seven disputed areas as per them. Please see the map below: