A day after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met his Chinese counterpart Admiral Dong Jun, Beijing said the two sides discussed the issue of maintaining “peace and tranquillity” along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).The two ministers had met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ Summit at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.On Wednesday, a spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in India, Yu Jing, posted on X, “The two sides discussed maintaining peace and tranquillity along the LAC as well as broader regional security issues, including the West Asia situation.”Describing his meeting with Admiral Dong, Rajnath had on Tuesday said, “It was a pleasure to interact with the Defence Minister of China during the SCO meeting in Bishkek.”The Indian statement did not mention that the LAC was discussed.The meeting between Rajnath and Admiral Dong was the first since the two had last met in June last year at Qingdao, China, at the previous year’s edition of the SCO Defence Ministers’ conference.Since the last meeting of the two ministers, things have progressed forward on the pending border issue — the LAC is the de facto boundary — between New Delhi and Beijing. The Special Representatives of the two countries National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi have met and explicitly referenced to a 2005 agreement between the two countries for restarting boundary settlement discussions.The 2005 agreement is named as ‘Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question’.This year’s SCO meeting had taken place in the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil being witnessed due to the situation in West Asia. The SCO, one of the largest political and economic organisations of the region, may discuss measures to reduce the impact of the ongoing conflict.The SCO is an inter-governmental organisation established on June 15, 2001 in Shanghai, China. Its members include India, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Belarus. India became a full member in 2017 and assumed the rotating chairmanship in 2023.