Current Events :
Maj Gen Harvijay Singh, SM) Senior Patron Sanjha Morcha
Jo to praym khaylan ka chaao, sir dhar talee galee mayree aao.Those who wish to play the game of love (Sikhi way of life), come to me with your head in your palm. Guru Gobind Singh
On 17 May 1915, a company of 15th SIKHs (Now 2nd Battalion, the SIKH Regiment) were in occupation of a section of a German trench. Engaged in the northern pincer of the offensive, near Richebourg l’Avoué, they were a part of the 3rd (Lahore) Division – 9th (Sirhind) Brigade Area between the two sides had been barricaded with corpses; the stench was un-bearing. Their state of ammunition was critically low. Resupply from the reserve trenches 250 yards away could enable them to hold out. British units had attempted to do so twice, on both occasions the officer in command had been killed and the party practically wiped out; a frightful situation to say the least.
Only a desperate action could save the day. Lieutenant John Smyth, 15th SIKHs, was ordered to take a bombing party. He took with him ten bombers from a crowd of volunteers. It became difficult for him to reject volunteers and finally he chose randomly perhaps looking for bigger guys who could pull the heavy load. Names of these heroes must be recalled with pride. Lance-Naik Mangal Singh, Sepoys Lal Singh, Sucha Singh, Sampuran Singh of 15th SIKHs. Sarain Singh, Sundur Singh, Ganda Singh, Harnam Singh of 19th PUNJABIs. Fateh Singh, Ujagar Singh, of 45th SIKHs. They set out with a gusty battle cry: ‘Jo Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal’, ……. taking two boxes containing ninety-six bombs.
Dropping over the parapet they wriggled their way through the mud, pulling and pushing the boxes along with them. They used pagris attached to the boxes and the men in front pulled them along, over and through the dead bodies, those behind pushed. • Even before they progressed a few yards, Fateh Singh fell, severely wounded. • In another hundred yards, Sucha Singh, Ujagar Singh and Sundur Singh were shot. Extreme bravado and faith in their Guru kept the remaining six going. • They nearly reached the end, when, Sarain Singh and Sampuram Singh were shot dead. Ganda Singh, Harnam Singh and Mangal Singh were wounded.
The second box had to be abandoned. Lieutenant Smyth and Sepoy Lal Singh wriggled their way ahead yard by yard. Water around them churned by a hail of bullets, and, clambered up the far bank amongst their cheering comrades. Both were unhurt, though their clothes were perforated by bullet holes. • However, shortly afterwards Lal Singh was struck by a bullet and killed instantly. In the final count, all ten Brave Sikhs were casualties. Once again after Saragarhi all Sikh Soldiers in a detail, had fallen executing an extreme and impossible task. For them the ‘izzat’ (pride) of the regiment and devotion to duty was above any other fear and danger. So ended one of the most gallant episodes of the World War I. “Attaching their puggarees to the fronts of the boxes, the men pulled them over or through the dead bodies, all of the party lying flat on the ground.
At any moment the bombs in the boxes might have exploded, for the whole of the ground was hissing with the deluge of rifle and machine gun fire, while the air was white with the puffs from bursting shrapnel.” Page 37, Leader Newspaper (Melbourne), Saturday 31 July 1915 Lieutenant Smyth was awarded the Victoria Cross. Lance Naik Mangal Singh received the Second-Class Indian Order of Merit, while the Indian Distinguished Service Medal was conferred on all sepoys of the bombing party; another and only collective award after the epic battle of Saragarhi. Many critics have felt the Sikhs deserved higher gallantry awards; for the gallant bombers, this was never a consideration. The Indian Armed Forces stand tall among their global peers because of their rich battle-hardened heritage, high motivation and tough training. ………………Contd, because these stories must be told – Lest we Forget
The 15th Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army – A rich legacy. Today the: 2nd Battalion, the SIKH Regiment (2 SIKH) — the direct, unbroken successor of the old 15th (Ludhiana) Sikhs. The 15th Sikhs built a formidable record across Asia and Africa: • China Expedition (1860–62) • Second Anglo-Afghan War — Ahmed Khel, Kandahar • Sudan (Mahdist War) — Suakin, Tofrek Chitral Expedition • Tirah Campaign • World War I o Western Front (France) o Egypt (Western Frontier Force) o Mesopotamia
In an unusual case, the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has granted life time arrears of family pension to the daughter-in-law of a World War II-era soldier whose widow could not be sanctioned family pension for the duration she was alive after his death.
The father-in-law of the applicant, Ram Surat was enrolled in the Indian Army as a Sepoy in 1944 and discharged from service in 1946. He later enrolled in the Defence Security Corps (DSC), where he served from 1962 to 1975.
On release from service, the soldier was granted service pension. He died in 2003 and his wife passed away in 2009. However, the pension payment order (PPO) for grant of family pension in her favour could not be issued during her lifetime due to non-receipt of the required documents.
“After the demise of soldier, it was the duty cast upon the respondents to issue PPO in favour of the wife of the late soldier for grant of family pension, but the same has not been issued for want of required documents,” the bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Gupta and Lt Gen Anil Puri observed in their order of May 6.
“However, the respondents did not make any sincere efforts to obtain the documents from the wife of the late soldier and she died in the year 2009 without getting family pension,” the bench added.
The applicant’s husband, who too has since died because of cancer, approached DSC Records in 2022 to get his mother’s family pension and life time arrears (LTA) sanctioned. The respondents claimed that the LTA certificate was received from the Treasury Officer concerned in June 2023, stating that the wife of the soldier has already been paid LTA benefits of her late husband, and hence the applicant is not entitled for payment of LTA.
This was countered by the applicant, saying that in reply to a letter from DSC Records in 2024, the Senior Treasury Officer, requesting the Records to take necessary action for releasing of family pension in respect of the soldier’s widow so that the due amount could to be paid to the next kin.
“The husband of the applicant and now the applicant have been raising the issue of family pension / LTA right from the year 2009. In 2026, the amount of LTA has still not been released in favour of the applicant. This itself shows the lackadaisical approach of the respondents in not releasing the amount of LTA in favour of the applicant, who happens to be the daughter-in-law of late soldier,” the bench remarked.
Directing the respondents to release the LTA amount within three months, the bench said that there is no other claimant except the applicant and as such, there would be no hurdle in releasing the LTA amount in favour of the applicant particularly when she is the only legal heir of the late soldier.
The Delhi High Court has ruled that the amount of pension drawn by defence officers cannot be deducted from the salary paid by Central Public Sector Enterprises if the post-retirement appointment through open advertisement is not linked to past military service and no subsequent pay protection is granted.
Two retired officers, a Colonel and a Wing Commander, were selected by Engineering Projects (India) Limited (EPIL), a Central Public Sector Enterprise in 2013 through a recruitment advertisement and their pay was fixed at the minimum of the applicable pay scales and no pay protection with reference to their last drawn military pay was granted. All details about their past service and defence pension drawn were duly furnished.
In 2019, EPIL sought to deduct the defence pension drawn by them from the salary paid by the organisation and for that purpose, directed them to furnish pension particulars for refixation of pay. They challenged the action as arbitrary, unreasonable, contrary to the governing policy framework and irreconcilable with the pay fixation consciously made and acted upon by EPIL itself at the time of their appointment.
“The officers were not absorbed into EPIL from the Armed Forces or any government department, nor were they appointed on deputation or with continuation of any lien from their previous service. They responded to public advertisements, participated in an open selection process and were thereafter appointed as regular employees to civil posts,” Col Indra Sen Singh (retd) counsel for the petitioners told The Tribune.
“Pension can be deducted only where an employee receives the benefit of past service by way of pay protection or fixation at a higher stage. If pay is fixed after reckoning last pay drawn, the non-ignorable portion of pension may be deducted to prevent double benefit. However, where the employee is treated as a fresh recruit and salary is fixed at the bare minimum of the scale, there is no rationale to deduct pension,” he added.
EPIL maintained that as per departmental rules the pay of re-employed government pensioners in CPSEs is to be fixed at the minimum of the applicable scale and that pension admissible to the retired employee is to be subtracted from admissible pay. It further averred that the petitioners had failed to furnish complete pension particulars, thereby preventing proper pay fixation in accordance with the applicable policy, and payments made contrary to applicable rules can be recovered.
Observing that pension earned for past service cannot be subjected to unilateral adjustment or deduction unless the rules clearly and fairly authorise such consequence, the Bench of Justice Sanjeev Narula, in its order of May 8, held that where the employer has consciously declined to grant pay protection or any corresponding advantage, the rationale for deducting pension does not operate with force.
The Bench also pointed out that the petitioners entered EPIL through open selection and the terms of appointment did not state that the defence pension drawn by them would be subtracted from their salary. No pay protection was granted and EPIL accepted and acted upon these terms for several years and the issue regarding deduction of pension was sought to be reopened only thereafter.
Finding it ‘considerably difficult’ in accepting EPIL’s interpretation of the said rules, the Bench said that if the organisation considered the provision applicable to the petitioners, the same ought to have been applied at the stage of appointment itself, or at least within a reasonable period.
“In the absence of fraud, concealment or misrepresentation on the part of the petitioners, the provision could not remain unacted upon for years together and thereafter be invoked retrospectively to unsettle service conditions which had been consciously fixed and acted upon,” the Bench remarked. “EPIL was not justified in seeking to deduct the defence pension drawn by the Petitioners from the salary fixed and paid by EPIL,” the Bench ruled.
The wife of a serving soldier received a new lease of life after the Command Hospital, Chandimandir, in collaboration with the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak, successfully facilitated the retrieval and rapid air transportation of a kidney from a brain-dead road accident victim.
An Army Aviation helicopter executed the critical life-saving mission from Chandimandir to Rohtak and back with precision and within stringent timelines, the Western Command said on Sunday.
The harvested organ was swiftly airlifted along with the medical team of Command Hospital, for an urgent transplant procedure at Chandimandir.
The successful transplant provided a new lease of life to the wife of a serving soldier, reflecting the operational efficiency, seamless civil-military coordination and humanitarian commitment of the Indian Army,” the Command said.
Command Hospital, Chandimandir, a tertiary care institution under the Western Command, is the Army’s premier organ retrieval and transplant centre and has made pioneering advancements in this field.
Earlier this month, the hospital had carried out its first heart retrieval for transplant, and in the process saved the life of a 14-year-old Sudanese boy admitted to a Delhi hospital. The organ was harvested from a 42-year-old brain-dead woman and airlifted to Delhi via a chartered flight within half an hour.
The boy was terminally ill and in the last stage of the battle for life. The hospital’s organ transplant team had also retrieved her liver, pancreas and kidneys, thereby enabling multiple recipients a new lease of life through organ donation.
In the past, Western Command Hospital has performed several organ harvesting and transplant operations, providing a new lease of life to critically ill people by harvesting kidneys, pancreas, liver, heart and cornea from brain-dead patients. It was among the first in the country to undertake pancreas transplant, said to be among the most difficult surgeries.
Organ donation was started in the Armed Forces in the late 2000s and introduced at the Western Command Hospital in 2014. The process is coordinated by the Armed Forces Organ Retrieval and Transplantation Authority in New Delhi.
Several other military hospitals across the country have also performed similar life-saving organ transplant operations.
During the intervening night of June 14-15 six years ago, Indian and Chinese troops clashed violently at Galwan on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, resulting in fatalities on both sides, including the Commanding Officer of the Sixteenth Battalion of the Bihar Regiment, Colonel Bikkumalla Santosh Babu, who was decorated posthumously with the Maha Vir Chakra, the second highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy.
The battalion was deployed in Galwan during Operation Snow Leopard following the protracted stand-off between India and China that began in the Spring of 2020 and has still not been fully resolved. It was tasked to establish an observation post opposite Chinese positions.
According to the citation for his award, while holding the position, his column faced stiff resistance from the adversary who attacked using lethal and sharp weapons along with heavy stone pelting from adjoining heights. Undaunted by the violent and aggressive action by the overwhelming strength of the enemy soldiers, the officer continued to resist the enemy’s attempt to push back Indian troops.
Despite being grievously injured, Colonel Bikkumalla Santosh Babu led from the front with absolute command and control despite hostile conditions to deter the vicious enemy attack on his position. In the skirmish that broke out and ensuing hand-to-hand combat with enemy soldiers, he valiantly resisted the enemy attack till his last breath, inspiring and motivating his troops to hold ground,” the citation states. Displaying exemplary leadership and astute professionalism, he showed conspicuous bravery in the face of the enemy and made the supreme sacrifice for the nation.
It was after two decades that a Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) was conferred for actions on the battlefield. In fact, the last MVC to be awarded was also to an officer serving with the Bihar Regiment, which was announced in 2000.
As part of Operation Vijay during the 1999 Kargil conflict, Captain Gurjinder Singh Suri, commissioned in the Army Ordnance Corps but was serving as the Ghatak platoon commander with 12 Bihar, was killed in a gun battle in the Uri sector in November 1999 when Pakistani army attacked the Faulad Post.
After the attack was repulsed, the platoon was clearing bunkers during which he killed two enemy soldiers and silenced a machine gun. In the process, he received a burst in his left arm but continuing with the task lobbed two hand grenades into a bunker killing another soldier. At this point, he was hit by an enemy rocket-propelled grenade critically wounding him.
Skilled musketeers of yore
Though amongst the Indian Army’s youngest Infantry Regiments, having been raised in its present form in 1941, its troops trace their martial lineage to 1757, when the 34th Sepoy Battalion was raised at Patna by Lord Robert Clive, the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency and architect of the East India Company.
Barring the Parachute Regiment that was formed in 1945, the Bihar Regiment is among the last three Infantry Regiments to have been raised as part of the erstwhile by the British Indian Army. In 1941, amidst the Second World War, three infantry regiments came into being – the Assam Regiment in June 1941, the Bihar Regiment in September 1941 and the Mahar Regiment in October 1941.
The Sepoy Battalion was formed by men from only from the Bhojpur region of Bihar and subsequent battalions expanded their recruitment base across the entire Shahabad area that comprises present day districts of Bhojpur, Buxar, Rohtas and Kaimur.
According to the Indian Army’s official website detailing infantry regiments, their success in combat had impressed the local ruler, Mir Kasim, to begin raising units trained in western combat techniques. The Bihari battalions raised by Mir Kasim had not only done well, but also beaten the British in some engagements.
The Bihari or ‘Poorbia’ soldiers as they came to be called because they hailed from the eastern Ganga plains, thereafter continued to be the backbone of the Bengal Infantry of the British, emerging as disciplined soldiers and quick to learn and apply the tactical drills and field craft with initiative.
An essay contained in the book, ‘India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism’, states that over time, Purbias had emerged as a community of specialist musketeers in context of Malwa armies and rulers in Malwa were keen to enlist Poorbias for the expertise in firearms possessed by them in order to update their military technology.
1857 War of Independence and beyond
As part of the Bengal Native Infantry that comprised personnel from Awadh and Bihar regions, Bihari troops played a significant role in the First War of Independence, 1857, which the British also refer to as the Sepoy Mutiny. In March 1857, at Barrackpore near Calcutta, Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry, who hailed from Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh, attacked British officers, and in May 1857, the war began in earnest from the Meerut garrison. Thereafter, Biharis were not encouraged by the British to join the military until after the First World War.
In 1923, an Indian Territorial Force Battalion, the 11th (Territorial) Battalion of the 19th Hyderabad Regiment (11/19HR), was formed with its headquarters at Danapore Cantonment. The Bihar Regiment was formed in 1941 by regularising 11/19HR and christening it as the First Battalion of the Bihar Regiment.
The newly raised battalion saw action in the Burma Campaign of World War – II, and as part of the Lushai Brigade and captured Haka in October 1944 and Gangaw in January 1945. For its actions, the battalion was awarded two Battle Honours – Haka and Gangaw, and bestowed the Theatre Honour Burma. The Second Battalion, raised in December 1942 participated in Operation Zipper for recapturing British Malaya. A third battalion was raised in 1945.
The Regiment’s first post-Independence raising was in 1960 and at present it has 20 regular battalions, four Rashtriya Rifles battalions and two Territorial Army battalions that draw their manpower from the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and some pockets of Odisha and West Bengal.
Post-Independence, the Regiment has participated in every war and major operation, including Kargil where it was awarded a Theatre Honour, as well as overseas in Sri Lanka and UN peacekeeping missions. Its roll of honour includes four Ashok Chakra, the highest civilian gallantry award and three Maha Vir Chakra.
Troops of the Army’s Pine Division conducted intensive joint training exercises in counter-terror operations with commandos of the National Security Guard (NSG) to hone their skills in fighting in built-up areas.
Sniper action, cordon and search, urban assault, room intervention, staircase clearing, close quarter battle drills were among the activities undertaken during the exercise, along with battle inoculation, obstacle course and physical training.
Newly inducted technology like drones, robotic mules, night vision goggles and thermal imaging devices were also employed along with the use of traditional assault dogs for neutralising and restraining hostile elements.
“The joint training enhanced combat capability of the troops, interoperability and mission readiness for operating in built-up areas,” the Western Command said. It was held at the NSG Centre in Manesar near New Delhi.
Functioning under the Ministry of Home Affairs, NSG is India’s nodal national counter terror force, trained and equipped to deal with anti-terrorist activities in all its manifestation and thwart serious acts of terrorism.
About 9,000 strong, the NSG is entirely a deputationist force where volunteers from the Armed Forces and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) serve for a fixed tenure.
It has two major arms – the Special Action Group, which is the offensive strike wing composed entirely of personnel drawn from the Indian Army and the Special Ranger Group (SRG), a support and protection group comprising personnel deputed from the CAFPs and state police forces.
The NSG carries out regular training exercises with the Army as well as with other forces, besides conducting specialist training courses in special operations and bomb disposal for state police forces.
The Army also has its own Special Forces – primarily the Parachute Regiment that comprises 15 battalions training and equipped for strategic tasks like operations behind enemy lines and raids at high value enemy assets, as well as anti-terrorist operations. The Air Force and the Navy have their own Special Forces.
The incoming Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Lt Gen NS Raja Subramani, takes over at a time when the Indian armed forces are sitting on the cusp of a technology-led transformation. His almost three-year tenure — that begins on May 31 —
Manipur continues to defy the logic of an effective double engine sarkar three years after the outbreak of violence on 3 May 2023. The latest killing of four individuals in two separate ambushes on the same day, that is 13 May 2026, reinforces the state of lawlessness in the state. While the first ambush, allegedly made by the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF)-Kamson faction at Zero point between Kotlen and Kotzim village in Kangpokpi district claimed the lives of three Kuki pastors and four critically injured, the second allegedly by an armed Kuki group at Joujangtek in Noney district claimed the life of a Chiru Naga and two critically injured. Seen against its immediate context, these killings stem from an unabated spiral of violence triggered by a drunken brawl at Litan Sareikhong village between a Kuki and a Tangkhul Naga three month ago. The stalemated suspense created by the capture and continuing detention of several individuals by rival parties following these ambushes, fourteen each of whom were released by both parties after two days, risks the danger of reviving the antagonistic Proustian memory of the two communities.
Not surprisingly, the Litan violence and this dastardly murder is seen by Kuki groups and some security experts as a proxy war launched by the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (IM) through its proxy, the ZUF, in cahoots with armed Meitei groups to bring to fruition the overarching political project to ethnically cleanse the Kukis from the foothills of the State. This position was unequivocally refuted by the Arambai Tenggol and the ZUF.
The subsequent violence and series of retaliatory attacks by rival armed groups since the Litan incident is seen by the United Naga Council (UNC) in early May 2026 as an ‘undeclared war’ and ‘targeted offensive’ launched by ‘Kuki militants’ operating under the shadow of ‘Suspension of Operation’. UNC contended that the ‘continued threats and attacks’ on Sakarphung, Litan, Thoyee, Sinakeithei and Ringui villages—all Tangkhul dominated villages—constituted a ‘challenge to Naga historical identity and territorial rights’. Taking this into account UNC, which is largely seen as a frontal NSCN-IM organisation, made a frantic appeal to Naga tribal hohos in Nagaland for ‘unity beyond tribal or geographical divisions’. The ambush at Zero point and Joujangtek, and the suspense created by the capture and continued detention of several individuals by rival parties must be seen as a calculated attempt by vested interests to broaden the theatre of violence beyond the Kuki-Meitei violence by transforming the Kuki-Tangkhul violent conflict into a fully-fledged Kuki-Naga war.
At the heart of this complex and multidimensional nature of the violence in Manipur lies a competing politics of labensraum—an idea developed by Friedrich Ratzel to imply an expansive Nazi territorial project—and the politics of indigeneity engaged by the three parties—Meiteis, Kukis and Nagas. Even though the Nagalim political project (of establishing a greater sovereign Naga state) runs counter to the Meitei labensraum politics, majoritarian minded Meiteis and powerful Naga nationalist groups seek to politically harness this cycle of violence to bolster their labensraum politics by forging an overlapping consensus on the question of indigeneity in Manipur. This consensus is built upon the premise that only the Meiteis and Nagas are indigenous to Manipur, and that everyone else including the Kukis are seen as the unwanted migrant ‘others’ or as ‘foreign occupiers’—to wit the latest press release of NSCN-IM on the violence.
By arbitrarily invoking a specific historical moment of migration of the Khongsai (Khongjais in colonial records), a segment of the Kukis, who were recruited by William McCulloch, the British political agent, in the 1850s to establish sepoy villages in the foothills of Manipur to secure the valley from ravaging head-hunting raids of the northern Angami Naga group, the Kukis are sought to be permanently denied of indigeneity.
Such an arbitrary narrative is deeply problematic as it conveniently ignores the presence of the Kukis in the valley areas of Manipur before 1485, the year the Cheitharol Kumpaba (also Kumbaba), the Meitei Royal Chronicle, began its written official records. Local historians have attested to this incontrovertible historical fact, a point acknowledged by both Cheitharol and Sri Rajmala (the royal chronicle of Tripura). In its selective appropriation of history, this narrative seeks to permanently ‘settlerize’ the Kukis in ways which powerfully resonate what Mahmoud Mamdani, the influential US-based Ugandan political theorist, considers drives nativist politics in large part of the world.
Three policy instrumentalities are being invoked to aggressively push and institutionalise this narrative overtime, namely, the inner line permit system, Schedule Tribe (ST) Status for the Meiteis, and the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC). While the Inner Line Permit system was restored to the State in December 2019 and marks the first step to institutionally flatten the hills-valley binary, the attempt to push ST status for the Meiteis is seen as a similar institutional ploy to grant the Meiteis unhindered access to, and control over land, resources and jobs/employment opportunities in the state. Faced with an institutional gridlock and backlash from the tribal groups including the Nagas, this attempt has triggered the outbreak of an institutionalised violence in Manipur from 3 May 2023. This has since descended into a semblance of stalemated ethnic turf war between the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar and Meiteis.
While the internal tension in the narrative on indigeneity becomes increasingly apparent, its long-term and adverse potential to invert the group-differentiated citizenship rights ordained by the Indian constitution becomes unmistakable. Privileging ‘indigeneity’ may be a convenient political tool to ‘otherise’ the Kukis as the unwanted, ‘illegal’ (im)migrant, settler ‘others’ or ‘foreign occupiers’. Yet it runs the risk of going against the grain of existing international covenants and practise where ‘indigeneity’ is universally accepted as a bulwark against domination. The increasing intellectual focus on ‘relative indigeneity’ which is sensitive to relative power—social, economic, cultural and political—dynamics of communities with competing indigenous claims in deeply divided place like Manipur may be more in line with the constitutionally ordained citizenship rights regime across India. While the NRC is yet in sight, the imminent implementation of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the state may culminate in massive disenfranchisement of Internally Displaced Persons across the divide. The writing on the wall is already apparent.
The jury is out if the saner voices cutting across the divides, who had been rendered voiceless in the wake of over three years of violence in Manipur, could reclaim their agency and voice to address the structural source of this complex and multidimensional violence before all communities in the state are consumed by mutual hatred and violence.
ndia is closely monitoring Sri Lanka’s decision to offer foreign investors control of an airport near the China-controlled Hambantota port, as it could present a rare opening for Indian firms seeking strategic footholds in the Indian Ocean, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
The Sri Lankan government has already called for expressions of interest from domestic and international investors by June 9 to take control of the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA) in Hambantota under a 30-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) model.
In 2017, China gained control of the strategic Hambantota port through a 99-year lease that had raised concerns in New Delhi in view of the location of the mega transit hub.
New Delhi is watching the new opportunity with keen interest as both neighbouring countries have sought to forge greater trade and strategic relations following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the island nation last April.
The Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, located about 250 km from the capital Colombo, has endured a troubled first decade, the people said.
Launched in 2013 with grand ambitions, the project cost USD 209 million, funded primarily by China’s Export-Import Bank. However, despite having a swanky terminal building and a 3,500-metre runway, it failed to draw the passenger traffic and airline commitments required for commercial survival.
For years, the facility languished underutilised and mocked globally as the “world’s emptiest airport”.
Now, the Sri Lankan government has issued a fresh Expression of Interest (EoI), inviting strategic investors — domestic and international — to take over, operate and transform MRIA into a modern aviation hub.
The EoI presents two independent investment tracks. The first is aerodrome operations — a management contract for civil airport operations, requiring a minimum of five years’ relevant aviation experience or operation of at least one international airport handling over one million passengers annually, the people cited above said.
The second is landside operations, offered on a BOT model with a 30-year lease and extension provisions. It will provide for the development of 238 hectares of land, comparable in scale to the Chinese-developed Colombo Port City but without any of the political risks, they said.
The land parcel can be used for setting up maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facilities, a flying school, logistics parks, solar installations, industrial parks and resort hotels.
Crucially, the two tracks are independent: investors can enter via landside operations alone, airside alone, or both — allowing meaningful flexibility to build a diversified, de-risked portfolio, the people said.
From India’s perspective, they said the project has a strategic dimension against the backdrop of China’s increasing attempts to expand its political and economic influence over the island nation.
“An Indian presence in Hambantota will be a tangible expression of India’s Neighbourhood First policy and Vision MAHASAGAR commitment to the Indian Ocean region, especially as a confidence-building investment in a close partner,” said one of the people.
Explaining the importance of the project, they said India’s aviation sector is the world’s fastest-growing and its MRO industry is under significant capacity pressure.
Mattala’s long runways, uncongested airspace and generous land footprint make it a natural candidate for an MRO hub serving Indian carriers, reducing turnaround times and costs while establishing a genuine Indian Ocean base, they said.
A flying school here makes equal sense: pilot training capacity in India is stretched and Mattala’s uncongested skies are an asset, not a liability, they noted.
The landside opportunity is also highly attractive as it includes 238 hectares of government-leased land perfect for industrial parks, logistics and solar projects, they said.
Because Sri Lanka is actively courting Indian investment and shares preferential trade access with India, a strategic opportunity like this is rare in the region, they added.
The new opportunity comes one-and-a-half years after a planned project close to Mattala by certain Indian investors didn’t fructify.
The previous government had nearly finalised a 30-year lease with an Indo-Russian joint venture anchored by Shaurya Aeronautics Pvt. Ltd, but the deal could not materialise following a change in the government.
The current EoI is a clean, fresh start, and the strategic logic is stronger than ever, the people said.
Last month, India’s state-run Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDL) acquired a 51 per cent controlling stake in Sri Lanka’s Colombo Dockyard PLC, in a boost to its strategic presence in the Indian Ocean Region.
Located in the Port of Colombo, Colombo Dockyard PLC (CDPLC) gives MDL a foothold in the island nation.
