Monthly Archives: August 2018

Tribune News Service

Jhajjar, February 24

Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s nephew Prof Jagmohan Singh today demanded release of all farmers arrested by the Delhi Police during the tractor parade on January 26 and withdrawal of cases registered against farmers during the three-month-long protest.

He raised the demands at a programme organised by the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) at the Rohad toll plaza on the Rohtak-Delhi national highway. The event was organised to mark the “Daman Virodhi Diwas”.

“The Modi government is pro-corporate. It becomes evident by its stance on the three contentious farm laws. The Centre is adamant on not revoking the legislations. The arrest of farmers is unjustified. They must be released immediately, while the police repression against farmers should come to an end,” said Prof Jagmohan, who is an agricultural economist.

Inderjit Singh, state vice-president, AIKS, said the “Daman Virodhi Diwas” was observed with enthusiasm, giving out the message that protesters were angry.

Earlier, Prof Jagmohan was welcomed with slogans of “Shaheed Bhagat Singh Zindabad” at the Rohad toll plaza. He was garlanded at the Madina toll plaza in Rohtak district.

At the Tikri border, protesting farmers marked the “Daman Virodhi Diwas” by criticising the Centre for alleged repression against protesting farmers.

Kaithal/Karnal: Farmers today pasted a memorandum of demands on the premises of the Kaithal DC’s office after they were informed that the DC was absent.

They demanded opening of all entry points to Delhi.

In Karnal, farmers handed over a memorandum of demands to the tehsildar.

Panipat: Members of the BKU and other organisations led by Sunil Dutt and Bintu Malik held a protest march to mark the “Daman Virodhi Diwas”. They later submitted a memorandum to tehsildar Kuldeep Malik.

Another from Punjab dies

Sonepat: A-65-year-old farmer from Hoshiarpur district died at the Singhu border on Wednesday. The deceased has been identified as Malkeet Singh. When he did not wake up in the morning, fellow protesters took him to the general hospital, where doctors declared him as brought dead. The police said the farmer might have died of a heart stroke. tns

New Delhi, February 24

The Supreme Court on Wednesday made clear that it cannot modify its verdict directing the Centre to consider granting permanent commission to women officers in the Army by entertaining individual grievances, that too almost a year after its pronouncement.

The top court, in its landmark verdict delivered on February 17, 2020, had asked the Centre to consider all serving Short Service Commission (SSC) women officers for permanent commission irrespective of them having crossed 14 years or, as the case may be, 20 years of service.

“We will not tinker with our judgement on the basis of such miscellaneous applications that too after one year. We cannot be looking into individual cases and start modifying our judgement. There is something called judicial discipline,” a Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah said.

The Bench, however, granted the counsel for Lt. Col. (Retd.) Priamvada A Mardikar, to approach the Armed Forces Tribunal with her grievances.

It also asked senior advocate R Balasubramanian, appearing for the Defence Ministry, to use his “good office” in trying to get the grievances of the former Army officer resolved.

“I will certainly use my good office to ensure that her issue is considered,” the lawyer assured the Bench during the hearing conducted through video conferencing.

The court noted the arguments of lawyer SS Pandey, appearing for the former woman officer, that there were two similarly-placed officers and one of them was granted the permanent commission and the second was denied and she later retired.

The lawyer said it was held by the top court in the verdict that the women officers, who retired during the pendency of the case, will be getting the retirement benefits as commissioned officers.

Permanent commission has been granted to Short Service Commissioned officers in all the ten streams of the Indian Army including Army Air Defense (AAD), Signals, Engineers and Army Aviation.

Justice Chandrachud had authored the last year verdict which had said that as a one-time measure, the benefit of continuing in service until the attainment of 20 years pensionable service shall also apply to all the existing SSC officers with more than fourteen years of services.

It had held that the option of grant of permanent commission shall be given to all women SSC officers and if those with more than 14 years of service do not opt for it then they will be entitled to continue in service until they attain 20 years of pensionable services.

While granting permanent commission to women officers in Army, it had rejected the Centre’s stand of their physiological limitations as being based on “sex stereotypes” and “gender discrimination against women”.

The top court had accepted the Centre’s policy of February 25, 2019 to grant permanent commission to SSC women officers in all the 10 streams in the Army.

The top court had said SSC women officers with over 20 years of service who are not granted permanent commission shall retire on pension in terms of policy decision.

It had noted that Indian Army has sanctioned 50,266 posts for officers, while the posts currently occupied are 40,825 including 1,653 by women officers.

It had noted that there is a shortage of 9,441 officers in the Indian Army. — PTI

New Delhi, February 24

The Samkyukta Kisan Morcha on Wednesday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind demanding “unconditional” release of arrested farmers and withdrawal of “false” cases in connection with the stir against the agri laws.

In its letter, the Morcha, an umbrella body of farmer unions agitating against the three central laws, also said notices allegedly being sent by police and other investigating agencies to the protesting farmers should be stopped.

“Under the banner of Samkyukta Kisan Morcha, farmers have been staging sit-in around Delhi for the last three months, but hundreds of farmers and agitation supporters have been lodged in jails by the Government of India and many state governments and false cases have been registered against them,” stated the letter shared by the SKM.It said that “innocent” farmers should be released from jails without any condition.

The letter was sent to the President as protesting farmer unions observed the day as “Daman Pratirodh Diwas”.

Meanwhile, the SKM welcomed the release of climate activist Disha Ravi, arrested by the Delhi Police in the toolkit case earlier this month.

On Tuesday night, Ravi was released from Tihar Jail hours after a city court granted her bail.

“SKM welcomed many observations made by judge Dharmender Rana in his orders,” it stated.

“SKM demanded immediate action against the Delhi Police which flouted many norms and arrested Disha Ravi in an illegal and extra-constitutional manner,” the statement stated.

Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, have been camping at the three Delhi border points of Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri since late November to press for a complete repeal of three farm laws and a legal guarantee on the minimum support price for crops.

Scores were arrested when protesters taking part in a tractor rally on January 26 deviated from the path, clashed with the police and stormed the Red Fort. PTI

Lt Gen AS Bahia (retd)

Ex-Director General, Military Operations

INDIA has undelineated and undemarcated, thus disputed, borders with some of its neighbours. With China, the entire length of the border from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, with the exception of 220 km in Sikkim (delimited by the Convention of March 1890, signed between the British regime and China at Calcutta), is not demarcated. A somewhat ambiguous Line of Actual Control (LAC) works as the de facto alignment. This has led to periodic border skirmishes, apart from a major war in 1962 and the one recently averted.

While it is in India’s long-term interest to permanently settle the dispute, the Chinese have never shown any urgency in the matter and have even scuttled the process of clarifying respective perception of the LAC, set in motion by the 1993 Agreement. In fact, they have been candid in saying that in developing bilateral relations, let the focus be on matters of convergence, leaving the contentious border issue to be resolved by the following generations — possibly a clever ploy to trigger confrontation, when expedient, as also to pose the threat of a ‘two-front war’ on India.

In the recent imbroglio in eastern Ladakh, Indian forces did well to promptly wrest the initiative from the Chinese, particularly by occupying dominating heights on the Kailash Range on August 29-30, 2020, thus effectively blunting Chinese designs for any further offensive as also markedly strengthening India’s bargaining position. This, followed by the five-point resolution adopted by the Foreign Ministers of both countries in Russia on September 10 and the subsequent rounds of military-level talks have finally yielded in a synchronised and mutually monitored disengagement. However, even if this process proceeds earnestly as visualised, disengagement can, at best, avert an immediate confrontation but not eliminate the possibility of a similar, or even worse, conflict in future. The ultimate solution lies only in a comprehensive resolution of the dispute. It is only prudent, therefore, that the current focus on disengagement of troops must eventually graduate, in continuum, to permanent settlement by delineating and demarcating the entire border.

The ambiguity about the border with China is an ancient legacy. In Ladakh, it was sanctified by treaties from time to time and assumed to be well known based on usage, customs and traditions. The British proposal, on attaining sovereignty over Jammu & Kashmir in 1847, to delineate the border by a joint tripartite commission did not find favour with China. Ironically, the British themselves seem to have lacked clarity as they kept vacillating between a maximalist Johnson-Ardagh Line and a more moderate Macartney Line, essentially dictated by requirements of the ‘Great Game’ for control over Central Asia, principal variables being the Russian pressure and Chinese ability to provide a buffer. Their map of the mid-1930s showed the frontier with a colour wash with the annotation ‘boundary undefined’. The firm boundary shown in the 1954 Survey of India map was not accepted by China and, in the absence of any presence of Indian military or administrative control of the area, they started the construction of the Aksai Chin road shortly thereafter.

Towards finding a solution now, it would be in order to visit the existing ground reality — Arunachal Pradesh has always been an integral part of India and Aksai Chin has been under Chinese control since the mid-1950s, through which passes their strategic national highway G219, being the only road link between Xinjiang and Tibet. The Chinese claims over Arunachal Pradesh as well as Indian assertion to take back Aksai Chin are virtually matching in rhetoric. A realistic appraisal of the balance of combat power of both sides would suggest that neither seems to be in a position to realise their respective claims in the foreseeable future by employing military means. The process of clarification of the LAC, started in 1993, has got scuttled and, even the LAC has now lost its sanctity; the confidence building measures (CBMs), formulated in 1996, have been compromised. As such, a pragmatic solution for the future lies in the realm of a negotiated border settlement.

Here, it would be instructive to understand the Chinese mindset on border settlement by recalling Deng Xiaoping’s proposal to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Foreign Minister, during his visit to Beijing in February 1979. He had then stated that China could compromise her stand in the eastern sector for a similar concession by India in the rest of the places, implying concessions by both sides. The Indian viewpoint on this matter, as stated by PV Narasimha Rao, the then Foreign Minister, in Parliament in July 1980, was that Arunachal Pradesh was an integral part of India and, as such, the very premise on which China was offering the concession had no basis. Nevertheless, mutual understanding and accommodation/adjustment in all sectors has remained at the core of their subsequent exchanges at various levels.

Flowing from the above, one possible way towards an equitable and mutually acceptable solution would be to recognise the boundary alignment based on the widely accepted ‘watershed principle’, both in the eastern and middle sectors. In the east, China must accept Arunachal Pradesh as an undisputed part of India and recognise the McMahon Line as the border. In the central sector, the six border passes agreed to in 1956 should form the basis of border alignment. Cartographic distortions of the past, resulting in differing perceptions, can be resolved using advanced techniques available now.

In the Ladakh sector, the solution may well be in a negotiated settlement somewhere between the Chinese 1959 Claim Line and the boundary claimed by India. Once this is broadly accepted in principle by both sides, detailed negotiations could follow. Underlying principles for fixing the precise alignment should include providing adequate depth to the Indian road to Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) as well as Chinese Highway G219; the boundary should run along identifiable topographical features, ensuring even defensibility; and no settled population must be dislocated. No doubt this would be a hard bargain and a long-drawn exercise, but will surely be a step forward to reach a final settlement. For the interim, both sides must commit to completely demilitarise the area and keep their forces well back at mutually agreed locations, to be monitored through a joint mechanism.

This would usher in a permanent ‘win-win’ situation for both countries and also pave the way for regional cooperation to mutual advantage.