What is LAC, Full Form, Difference between LAC and LOC

Full Form of LAC

The entire world has witnessed the magnified wrestle in the 1962 Indo-China war. Many soldiers killed in the treacherous terrains, many were deeply wounded, and many faced serious injuries. Later, the war ended on 20 November 1962 when China announced a ceasefire and declared its withdrawal to its claimed LOC. Now, let’s discover what is the full form of LOC.

The full form of the abbreviation LAC is Line of Actual Control.

This tutorial will briefly cover the definition, overviews, divided LAC provisions, LAC clarification, when did India accepted LAC, different from the LAC and Line of Control and other detailed information related to LAC or Line of Actual Control.

What is LAC?

“LAC or Line of Actual Control is a 4057 km long demarcation borderline that separates the Indian region from the Chinese-controlled region in the erstwhile sovereign state of Jammu and Kashmir, constituted after the 1962 Indo-China war.”

The Line of Actual Control is a separation line between India and China. This borderline specifies the land authority falling under the Indian-controlled and Chinese-controlled territories. It crosses the three areas of the north Indian states, i.e. the western province Ladakh, Kashmir, the middle province of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and the eastern province Sikkim Arunachal Pradesh. The LAC was created to specify the land area, and people residing on that land shall follow the rules regulation of the marked country. The notion of LAC arrived in a two-sided agreement in 1993. However, there was no definite contract on territory positions between them.

LAC: Divided provisions

The LAC is generally divided into three provisions:

1. The western division: It was divided between Ladakh (located in the Indian territory)and the Tibet and Xinjiang independent sectors (located on the Chinese territory). This sector was the location of the India-China conflicts in 2020.
2. The middle division: It is mostly-undisputed division between Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh (based on the Indian Territory) and Tibet (located on the Chinese territory).
3. The eastern division: It was divided between Arunachal Pradesh (located on the Indian provision) and the Tibet region (located on the Chinese territory). This division accompanies the McMahon Line.

LAC: Clarification

It was mentioned in Article 10 section of the 1996 border agreement that both the countries settled to the interchange of maps to support the affiliation of the Line of Actual Control. Later in the year 2001, the initial detailed took place in accordance with regard to the central/middle segments. The maps of Sikkim were bartered, resulting in the "Memorandum on Expanding Border Trade". However, the progression of interchange of maps soon blacked out in 2002–2003 when other divisions were brought up.

LAC: When did India accepted

Initially, India had disapproved of the idea of LAC in both 1959 and 1962. Later, when the Chinese Premier Li Peng’s visited India in 1991, he, along with the Indian Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, came to a mutual understanding to secure harmony and peace at the LAC border.

India officially accepted the LAC agreement in 1993 when Rao visited Beijing, and the two parties confirmed and signed the LAC Agreement. The LAC reference did not clarify any brief details of LAC at the time when it was signed. Later, to reconcile the disagreements in various provisions, the two countries accepted that the Joint Working Group would clarify all the issues and disagreements raised on the LAC's alignment.

What is the difference between Line of Actual Control (LAC) and Line of Control (LOC)?