Manohar Parrikar

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 23

The Defence Acquisition Council today asked the three services — Army, Navy and Air Force — to review and cancel all pending acquisition proposals that have lost “contemporary relevance”.Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who chaired the council meeting today, reviewed the progress of acquisition projects approved by it. It was found that since June 2014, when the Narendra Modi-led government came to power, 81 acquisition projects worth Rs1.5 lakh crore ($23 billion) have matured — meaning either the contract has been signed or the order has been placed. Much of this is under the Make in India category.Parrikar said 314 pending acquisition projects lost relevance as technologies had changed. These projects came up to the council but were not cleared. After taking over as the Defence Minister, Parrikar had promised changes in approach to acquire weapons and equipment. It’s under the same plan that he has speeded up matters. Of these projects, 86 are in final stage of clearance and Parrikar has asked the services to speed up matters and get these cleared over the next four or five months.Almost all Defence purchases typically take over at least five years to fructify and go through several phases starting from tendering to equipment and technical trails and commercial negotiations etc.Despite the recent effort of the Modi government to prioritise defence equipment manufacturing in India, under the “Make in India” programme, India continues to be the biggest importer of military hardware in the world according to a report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released on Monday.Aggressive changes in defence equipment manufacturing policy, more cooperation and coordination between the forces, the private sector, Defence Public Sector Undertakings, assured orders for the private sector and grants for designing and developing military hardware are some of the steps the government has unveiled recently to kick-start defence equipment manufacturing in India.The government hopes these changes will start showing results in the next five years, dramatically reducing foreign exchange outflow and make India a defence manufacturing hub as well.

Defence Acquisition Council meets

• At the Defence Acquisition Council meeting, Manohar Parrikar (pic) said 314 pending acquisition projects lost relevance as technologies had changed
• After taking over as the Defence Minister, Parrikar had promised changes in approach to acquire weapons and equipment. It’s under the same plan that he has speeded up matters
• Of these projects, 86 are in final stage of clearance and Parrikar has asked the services to speed up matters and get these cleared over the next four or five months

Lt Gen KJ Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command, honours Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar in Chandimandir on Friday. A Tribune photograph

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 19

Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who is also on the Parliament Standing Committee on Defence, Consultative Committee on Defence and the Central Advisory Committee for the National Cadet Corps, visited Headquarters Western Command, Chandimandir, today.He addressed officers of the Command Headquarters on security challenges being faced by the nation. He was felicitated by Lt Gen KJ Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command, with the Army Commander’s Commendation Card for his contribution to the cause of the defence community and actively pursuing various defence issues, including welfare of the veterans, at the national level.In the recent past, the Western Command has recongnised the efforts and felicitated various civilians who have been actively involved in ensuring security of the nation in one way or the other, including their role in counter-terrorist operations, and also citizens pursuing welfare of the defence veterans.

Rajya Sabha MP gets commendation card at Western Command

Ideally, Siachen should be demilitarised and restored to status quo ante, with both sides withdrawing amicably. However, this will require a high degree of maturity from both sides. This is easier said than done.

Specialised rescue teams carrying out operations to search for bodies of the 10 soldiers of Infantry’s 19 Madras Regiment who were killed in an avalanche in Siachen. The glacier is the world’s coldest and most-expensive-to-maintain battlefield. PTI

THE  Siachen glacier, located at the world’s only nuclear tri-junction and where the overlapping boundary claims of three nuclear weapon states — China, India and Pakistan — converge, is again in the news following the death of 10 Army soldiers belonging to the Infantry’s 19 Madras Regiment following an avalanche on February 3. Also known for being the world’s highest, coldest and most expensive-to-maintain battlefield, the incident raises a question about the rationale of maintaining troops in an area that has led an American commentator to describe India and Pakistan as “two bald men fighting over a comb”. This is not the first time that both India and Pakistan have lost soldiers to an avalanche in this region where the human body reaches its limits and where helicopters, the only source of air support, exceed their flight envelope. On December 16, 2012, six soldiers belonging to the Infantry’s 1 Assam Regiment were killed, while a seventh went missing following an avalanche in sub sector Hanif in Turtuk area of the glacier region. The worst-known incident, however, occurred on April 7, 2012, when about 140 Pakistani soldiers were killed after an avalanche slammed into their army camp in Gyari. The incident then led Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to appeal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to cooperate in demilitarising the glacier region. For the record, the 76.6-km-long Siachen glacier, the second-longest glacier outside the polar regions, is located well within Indian territory. Indian troops are located in over 100 posts atop the Saltoro Ridge, which in turn forms the 110-km-long actual ground position line (AGPL) located at heights between 17,500 and 22,000 feet, starting from NJ 9842, a grid map reference. This is the point until which the Line of Control (LoC) is officially demarcated. The Siachen glacier, in roughly the form of an inverted triangle, “rests” on NJ 9842 with Indra Col (to the left) and the Karakoram Pass (to the right) in the north as the two extremities. The glacier, located in Ladakh district of Jammu and Kashmir, is situated between the Saltoro ridge to the west and the main Karakoram range to the east. Such is the geo-political location of the Siachen glacier that it lies just south of the great watershed that separates Central Asia from the Indian subcontinent and Pakistan from China in this region. The origin of the Siachen conflict lies in a set of five words dating back to the CFL (Ceasefire Line) Agreement signed in Karachi on July 27, 1949 by military representatives of India, Pakistan and the UN Military Observers Group. The CFL (renamed LoC following the July 1972 Simla Agreement) was demarcated up to Chalunka, Khor and NJ 9842 with the remaining portion extending northwards left open with the five words “thence north to the glaciers”. Neither side then imagined demarcating a difficult-to-survey terrain, let alone occupying it. But all that changed following a long chain of events starting with India’s loss of territory to China in the Ladakh region in the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the China-Pakistan border agreement of 1963 in which the 5,800 sq km Shaksgam tract was ceded by Pakistan to Beijing, Pakistan’s dismemberment in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, the subsequent cartographic claims by Pakistani and western countries and mountaineering expeditions for westerners facilitated by Pakistan in the glacier region during the 1970s.  On April 13, 1984, the Indian Army pre-empted a Pakistani Army plan to occupy the Siachen glacier after it heli-dropped 29 soldiers belonging to the 4 Kumaon Regiment on the Bilafond La, a tactically important Pass, located on the Saltoro range. Following this, the Army then secured Sia La, another tactically important Pass, and Indra Col, the northern most point of the Saltoro ridgeline. Both sides then rushed to secure the dizzying heights of the Saltoro Ridge overlooking the glacier to gain visual domination of the other. It was a race which the Indian Army quickly managed to win, thus completely denying Pakistan a piece of the Siachen glacier. This continues till today. But this victory also brought with it the nightmare of logistics and of creating an infrastructure to maintain some 4,000 soldiers in a terrain and environment which tests the limits of human physiological and psychological endurance. The biggest enemy remains the weather where temperatures can fall to as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius, with a constant danger of blizzards and avalanches. The minefield of numerous crevasses adds to the challenge to foot soldiers as does the lack of oxygen. Transporting supplies is a major challenge considering that single-engine light helicopters can only carry a limited weight to those heights. Since India has access to the entire glacier, it also means that the supply line is long from the nearest road head — about 70 km. In contrast, because Islamabad does not have the glacier, the farthest distance the Pakistani Army has to cover from its road head is 20 km. After initially suffering considerable losses, the Indian Army has, in fact, managed to reduce casualties in the glacier region by improving equipment for the soldiers, installing pre-fabricated fibre glass huts and laying a kerosene oil pipeline, to name a few measures. In a rare admission, Pakistan conceded it had lost 213 soldiers between 2003 and 2010. The approximately 140 soldiers killed in 2012 are in addition. In the absence of figures released by the Pakistani Army both preceding and following this 2003-2010 period, it is difficult to put an exact figure on Pakistani casualties.  Data released by the Indian government in Parliament reveals that the Indian Army had lost 869 soldiers on the glacier in 31 years, starting from April 1984 to December 2015. This includes 33 officers, 54 junior commissioned officers and 782 other ranks. But this does not include the number of Indian soldiers injured or permanently incapacitated. The extent to which Indian casualties have reduced is evident from the fact that the Army lost just four soldiers each in 2007 and 2008, 10 in 2013, six in 2014 and five in 2015. In contrast, some stray Pakistani casualty figures reveal 12 Pakistani soldiers killed in 2007 and 13 in 2008. Almost all casualties are attributed to the harsh weather and terrain rather than to enemy firing. Although the two sides have held 13 rounds of discussions to demilitarise the glacier, the biggest hurdle is Pakistan agreeing to record the existing positions on the Indian side. The Indian Army considers this paramount to prevent Pakistan from occupying it as soon as India vacates the Saltoro ridge gained at much human and financial cost. Pakistan refuses to oblige so as to prevent a subsequent legal claim by India. A formal demarcation will also expose the Pakistani Army to ridicule considering that, contrary to claims made domestically, they have never fought on the glacier. Pakistan claims a diagonal line running north-east, from NJ 9842 to the Karakoram Pass, which not only encompasses the entire Siachen glacier but also threatens Indian positions in Leh. In addition to forming a direct linkage with Chinese- occupied Ladakh, the Indian Army says that such a claim is in direct violation of the watershed principle which India has followed in occupying the Saltoro ridge. The area should be demilitarised in the interest of preventing further environmental degradation of the area.  Decisions related to geo-politics can never be and never are based on sentiments and emotion. Unfortunately, in our world where realpolitik continues to dictate statecraft, a price tag cannot be placed on a country’s national interest. A country has to pay the price, no matter how severe, to preserve its national interest unless, of course, a détente can be effected or one side is willing to compromise. 

dkumar@tribunemail.com

Vijay Mohan.Tribune News Service,Chandigarh, February 16

The Supreme Court has issued notice to the Central Government on a petition filed by the father of a fighter pilot killed during the 1999 Kargil operations, challenging the constitutional validity of certain provisions in the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) Act which virtually debar the litigants from appealing against the Tribunal orders.Sections 30 and 31 of the AFT Act, which do not permit filing of appeals except in cases involving a “point of law of general public importance”, are in sharp contrast with the rights available to all civilian employees, who can approach the High Court and then the Supreme Court against orders passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal.Gurbax Singh Dhindsa, father of Late Flying Officer GS Dhindsa, who died in a crash at Srinagar when the fighter aircraft had been scrambled for a live mission during Operation Vijay, had been refused the correct pension by the Defence Accounts Department. Though the AFT granted him his entitlement, it refused to grant him interest from the date of death.When the petitioner wanted to approach the High Court for interest, he learnt that the HCs had been barred from entertaining challenges to AFT orders by an SC verdict of March 2015, passed on a plea filed by the Central Government in 2011. Further, the SC could only hear appeals concerned with ‘general public importance’.The petitioner contended that provisions of the Act have rendered the AFT as the first and the last court for litigants without any remedy or access against its orders, thereby leaving litigants at a serious disadvantage.

Last month, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had said his country had received “actionable intelligence” on the Pathankot perpetrators, and promised early action

Masood Azhar, the Jaish-e-Mohammad founder sought by India for the Pathankot airbase attack, has threatened retaliation if Pakistan shuts down terrorist groups operating against India.

“I have prepared an army that adores death. To uproot this army is not in the power of our enemies. God willing, this army will not let our enemies celebrate, nor occasion for anyone to miss my presence,” Azhar wrote in the Peshawar-based jihadi magazine al-Qalam’s issue dated January 26.

In his first comments on the fallout of the Pathankot attack, Azhar also assailed the Pakistani leadership: “Their actions against mosques, seminaries and jihad are dangerous for the integrity of the country itself.”

Last month, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had said his country had received “actionable intelligence” on the Pathankot perpetrators, and promised early action. But newspapers there reported Monday that investigators had been unable to locate the owners of five cellphone numbers used to coordinate the strike.

“The rulers of our country are sad that we have disturbed their friends,” Azhar wrote in the article, in an evident reference to Nawaz Sharif . “They wish to arise on the Day of Judgment to be judged as friends of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and (former Prime Minister) Atal Behari Vajpayee.”

Azhar claims that “acting on the orders of others, Pakistan’s rulers have reduced their own country into a heap of fire and explosive. Every single one of them comes, spreads fire and then escapes abroad”.

Said to have been held soon after the Pathankot attack in what Pakistan’s government describes as “protective custody”, Azhar has been charged by India with several major terrorist attacks, including the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Kandahar in 1999 and the attack on Parliament House in 2001.

And in his first published comments on his incarceration by Pakistan in 2002, when General Pervez Musharraf ordered him held to defuse a military build-up by India, Azhar said he can only be held at a time of “divine predestination”.

“Many, times I actually attacked and chased arrest, only for it to escape from my grasp,” he claimed.

“When arrest finally came, it did not leave me even at my own home. For eight months, arrest lived with me in my home, where I could see even my aging parents only twice a week. This was though I did not have any case registered against me in any of the police stations in entire Pakistan, and I had never even imagined, let alone planned, doing harm to my country,” he wrote.

“I got only one answer when I asked why I was in prison: ‘What can we do, we have world pressure for your arrest’”.

He urged his followers not to be afraid of incarceration: “Pervez Musharraf was fond of keeping me imprisoned, but he was also arrested and imprisoned. He continues to lead a life of quasi-imprisonment. It is akin to worship to have been arrested because of your service to Islam, and every Muslim should be mentally ready for it, because, all the Holy Prophets and holy Companions have faced imprisonment”.

In his years in Indian jails before his release in the 1999 Indian Airlines hostages-for-prisoners swap, Azhar said, he completed the fourth volume of an exegetical work on jihad.

The new issue of al-Qalam also contains an article on the Pathankot strike by Naved Masood Hashmi, a cleric well known in jihadi circles for a 1998 biography of slain al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden. “If Indian rulers do not agree to free the Kashmiri nation based on the United Nations resolutions… these attacks would surely continue,” he wrote.

– See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/if-i-am-held-my-army-wont-let-our-enemies-celebrate-says-jaish-chief-masood-azhar/?utm_source=inshorts&utm_medium=inshorts_full_article&utm_campaign=inshorts_full_article#sthash.s55GBbyl.dpuf

Chandigarh, January 31

The controversy over the exclusion of the Sikh Regiment from the Republic Day parade in Delhi refuses to settle down, with Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday describing the episode as “sad and regrettable” in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and saying that the community was “hurt”.In his letter, Badal said “the absence of the Sikh regiment from the Republic Day parade was sad and regrettable”.Badal urged the Centre to issue necessary instructions and guidelines “to ensure that the Sikh Regiment is never kept out of the Republic Day parade in future”.“A widespread feeling of hurt and resentment (has been) caused by the non-inclusion of the Sikh Regiment in the Republic Day parade where French President Francois Hollande was the chief guest,” Badal said in the letter.According to reports, the Sikh Regiment, which had participated in the parade earlier, was excluded this time.“The exclusion of the Sikh Regiment from the parade would be regrettable at any time, but it was doubly so this year because of the presence of the French President as a special guest at the event. —IANS

Regret absence of Sikh regiment at R-Day parade: CM to Modi

A firing range at Akhnoor in Jammu division

Ravi Krishnan Khajuria,Tribune News Service,Jammu, February 10

The state Home Department has been awaiting a response to a proposal submitted by it to the Ministry of Defence a year ago for enhancing compensation package to people affected by field firing ranges across the state.On February 27 last year, the Home Department had submitted the proposal to the Ministry of Defence and, on February 7 this year, Governor NN Vohra had requested Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar for enhanced compensation. Jammu Divisional Commissioner Pawan Kotwal said the rates of compensation being given to the affected population were fixed almost three decades ago.“We have sent a proposal to the Centre suggesting enhanced rates relevant with the existing market rates. The affected people are getting paltry compensation,” he added.He said that on the days of firing, the Army, well in advance, asks the people living close to ranges to stay indoors to remain safe and sometimes they have to be dislocated, which affects their livelihood. State Home Secretary RK Goyal said the Centre’s response to the proposal was still awaited. The Defence Ministry has been asked to give compensation at a par with the market rates.On restrictions on movement and dislocation of local populace on days of firing, the Army has fixed Rs 8 (for the day) and Rs 12 (for the night) for males and females above 18 years. The Home Department has suggested hiking it to Rs 151 (for the day) and Rs 225 (for the night). The Home Department proposed Rs 2.50 lakh for deaths due to firing, Rs 2 lakh for 100 per cent disability, Rs 1.50 lakh for 50 per cent to 100 percent disability and Rs 1 lakh for disability below 50 per cent. The letter mentioned that to date the Army has not paid compensation or ex gratia for losses or injuries to human lives due to the firing practice.A compensation for livestock of the villagers killed due to firing practice has also been proposed. The letter also suggested compensation for crop loss, a joint survey of which should be conducted by the Revenue authorities with the Army unit concerned.The letter also contained objections of the people to renewal of firing ranges. The objections were based on displacement and restrictions imposed on movement of people on days of firing that affected their economic activities; deaths due to shells remaining unexploded and not cleared by the Army units after firing; damages to building and other structures due to tremors as a result of explosions; issues related to medical treatment of the injured and compensation for livestock and crop loss.The “Agenda for Alliance” of the PDP-BJP government had also wanted that monetary remuneration should be made by the Army at market rates.

Army jawan on LoC dies of cardiac arrest

Srinagar, February 10

An Army jawan collapsed and died due to cardiac arrest while patrolling the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir yesterday, a police official said here today.Naik Davinder Singh of 11 Kumaon Regiment collapsed while on patrol duty in the Keran sector of Kupwara district, the official said.He was evacuated to the military hospital at Drugmulla where he was declared brought dead by the doctors.Preliminary investigations have shown that Davinder Singh suffered a cardiac arrest, leading to his death.Meanwhile, police have started inquest proceedings in the case. — PTI