National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will travel to Beijing on Monday for the 25th round of India-China Special Representatives talks on the boundary question, set to be held with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Tuesday, according to official sources cited by PTI.
The SR mechanism, in place since 2003, was designed to work towards a comprehensive resolution of the 3,488-km India-China border dispute.
Though a final settlement has remained elusive, both governments continue to view the platform as a valuable channel for managing periodic flare-ups along the frontier.
This round of talks comes just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping's anticipated visit to New Delhi for the BRICS summit on September 12-13.
While neither side has formally confirmed his attendance, officials in both capitals are hopeful the visit will materialise, potentially opening the door to a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the summit's margins.
The two leaders last met in August last year on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin.
Ahead of the Doval-Wang meeting, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday that stable border conditions remain central to the broader relationship.
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Speaking at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum in New Delhi, he said, "I think we went through a particularly bad patch between the summer of 2020 and the autumn of 2024, and that was primarily an outcome of the situation in the border areas."
He added, "At the end of the day, peace and tranquillity in the border areas is a prerequisite for good relations, and the state of the border, to a very large measure, naturally would determine the state of the relations."
His remarks followed reports of increased Chinese military activity near Arunachal Pradesh's Upper Subansiri region.
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Responding to these reports on August 12, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said the border situation was "generally stable at the moment," noting that the two countries had held the 36th meeting of their Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on Border Affairs and "agreed to maintain communication via diplomatic and military channels."
Separately, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on August 11 that India regarded border matters with China as "most serious," reiterating that peace along the Line of Actual Control was of "utmost importance" to the trajectory of ties.
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