Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Special Representatives mechanism has met twenty-five times since 2003 without settling the boundary. That is not a failure of the mechanism. It is the mechanism working as designed.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval holds the 25th round of Special Representatives’ Talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing today, on the second day of a two-day visit. He has also called on Chinese Vice President Han Zheng. The two are the designated Special Representatives under a channel established in 2003 to address the boundary question comprehensively, and the agenda extends beyond the border to bilateral, regional and international issues. The 24th round was held in August last year.
Ahead of the talks, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar reiterated that “peace and tranquillity” along the border areas are a prerequisite for good relations with China. That formulation is doing precise work. It does not say the boundary must be settled before the relationship can improve; it says the line, wherever it currently runs, must be quiet. The distinction is the entire architecture of Indian policy on this question, and it is why a mechanism can meet twenty-five times without resolution and still be counted useful.
India’s Special Representative. Ajit Doval has carried the boundary brief across successive rounds of a channel created in 2003; today’s Beijing session is the twenty-fifth.
A channel that meets every year is not a channel that has failed to conclude. It is a channel that has refused to close.
At a Glance
• Round: 25th Special Representatives’ Talks, Beijing, 25 August 2026
• Principals: NSA Ajit Doval and Foreign Minister Wang Yi
• Mechanism created: 2003, to address the boundary comprehensively
• Previous round: 24th, August 2025
• Also on the visit: a call on Vice President Han Zheng
• Indian position, restated: peace and tranquillity on the border is the prerequisite
• Scope: boundary question plus bilateral, regional and international issues
For the ordinary reader, the practical stakes sit downstream of the talks rather than in them. A quiet border is what permits direct flights, visa issuance, student mobility, journalist postings and trade facilitation to be discussed at all; every one of those has moved in step with the state of the frontier over the past six years. The Special Representatives channel is also the only forum in which the two systems talk about the boundary at a level senior enough to bind their militaries, which is why it is described by both sides as the main channel for negotiation and an important platform for communication on matters of mutual interest.
The constructive reading is that India has kept two things separate that could easily have been collapsed into one: the sovereignty question, which is not close to settlement and should not be traded away for atmospherics, and the management question, which is tractable and has been managed. The way forward lies in converting the common understandings each round produces into written, verifiable arrangements on patrolling, buffer zones and border-management protocols — the unglamorous text that keeps soldiers apart. Twenty-five rounds have bought India the time to build the roads, tunnels and forward infrastructure that make its own position on the frontier stronger. That, rather than a final map, is what the mechanism has delivered.
