MEA sources said all 30 passports of the Indian delegation "were withdrawn'' because MoD "bungled'' in not taking the "mandatory prior approval'' from the screening committee headed by the cabinet secretary before submitting them to the Chinese embassy. Nevertheless, the controversy sent shockwaves across South Block. For one, the India-China annual defence dialogue (AAD) held in New Delhi just last month had decided to "enhance military exchanges'' as a major confidence-building measure between the world's two largest armies who share an unresolved 4,057-km Line of Actual Control.
The AAD, in fact, was touted to have significantly brought down tensions after the Dalai Lama episode led to the scrapping of talks between national security adviser Shivshankar Menon and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo on November 28-29, which was to include the inking of a new bilateral border mechanism to prevent flare-ups. For another, as a follow-up to the AAD, a 29-member Chinese military delegation undertook a four-day visit of India, which included a tour to the parachute regiment at Agra, in the last week of December.
The Indian tri-Service delegation, headed by an air vice-marshal and including Group Captain Panging was to visit a few military facilities in China from January 10 to 13, apart from interacting with their Chinese counterparts, sources said.
China, which lays claim over Arunachal Pradesh to the extent of dubbing it "south Tibet'', has time and again denied visas to those hailing from the state despite Indian protests.
Bilateral relations, incidentally, had also taken a nose-dive in July 2010 after China had denied a regular visa to the then Northern Army commander Lt-Gen B S Jaswal on the ground that he was commanding forces in the "disputed and sensitive'' region of Jammu and Kashmir.
It had led India to freeze all defence exchanges with China till an Indian delegation led by Maj-Gen Gurmeet Singh, commanding a Rashtriya Rifles division in J&K, visited Beijing in June last year.
China is more rigid over Arunachal, with its troops frequently intruding into Indian territory across the LAC. In fact, Chinese troops had damaged a 200-feet long stone wall in Tawang region of Arunachal Pradesh on July 13 last year, which was subsequently re-built by India after lodging "a strong protest'' with China.
The AAD last month, chaired by defence secretary Shashikant Sharma and PLA's deputy chief of general staff General Ma Xiaotian, had agreed that differences in the political and military arenas should be managed in a more mature fashion, without any needless scoring of points.
The two sides had decided that while resolution of the long-festering boundary dispute "would take time'', the two armies should ensure that "peace and tranquility'' was maintained all along the LAC in all the three sectors - western (Ladakh), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal).