Monthly Archives: August 2018

Those felicitated include Rupinder Pal Singh, Gurjant Singh, Monika Malik, Sharmila Devi, Reena Khokhar, Shivendra Singh and Gurminder Singh; two hockey coaches given a cash award of Rs 2.5 lakh each

Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya and Punjab sports minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi present during the felicitation ceremony of hockey players in Chandigarh on Saturday. Tribune photo: Nitin Mittal

Chandigarh, August 21

Hockey Chandigarh and Tynor on Saturday felicitated the hockey players who participated in the recent Tokyo Olympics at a function here by giving five players a cash award of Rs 5 lakh each.

Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya was the chief guest and Punjab Sports Minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi was the guest of honour.

Those felicitated were Rupinder Pal Singh, Gurjant Singh, Monika Malik, Sharmila Devi, Reena Khokhar, Shivendra Singh and Gurminder Singh. Two hockey coaches were given a cash award of Rs 2.5 lakh each.

The Haryana Governor congratulated the hockey stars who after 41 years won a bronze medal and brought international acclaim to Indian hockey. He said he was happy to see that the hockey team had a lot of players from Haryana and Punjab.

Dattatreya said under the state sports policy, the Haryana government had awarded Rs 6 crore to Olympians for winning gold, Rs 4 crore for winning silver, and Rs 2.5 crore for bronze medal winners. The Haryana government had given Rs 23.25 crore as reward to outstanding players, adding that all states should prepare a sports policy to encourage players so that they can perform even better.

The Punjab Sports Minister said it was praiseworthy on the part of Hockey Chandigarh to felicitate the hockey stars. Lauding their performance at the Tokyo Olympics, he said it was indeed a proud moment for the state that the players had given an excellent performance.

Giving details about sprucing up facilities in Punjab, he said new facilities would be created in the state and the existing ones would be upgraded.

Karan Gilhotra, president, Hockey Chandigarh, said, “It was always the endeavour of Hockey Chandigarh to encourage the players and will continue to promote the sport in a big way. It was indeed a moment of pride for the country to see our players excelling at the Olympics.”

He heads the Karan Gilhotra Foundation which is actively engaged in the service of the sports community.

P.J. Singh, Senior Vice-President, Hockey Chandigarh and Chief Managing Director, Tynor, assured support to the hockey players. IANS

On June 30, 2020, he led an Army team that neautralised 2 ultras

Major Ankesh Jarial with President Ram Nath Kovind after receiving the Sena Medal at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Our Correspondent

Una, August 21

Major Ankesh Jarial, a resident of Amb in Una district, was awarded the Sena Medal for Gallantry at a function organised at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi on the occasion of Independence Day. Major Ankesh is at present serving in Rashtriya Rifles and posted in South Kashmir.

According to his citation, on the night of June 30, 2020, on the basis of inputs from local sources regarding the presence of militants at a location in Anantnag district, Major Ankesh led a team of soldiers and cordoned off the terrorists, who were planning an attack.

The terrorists began firing indiscriminately. The Army team retaliated and neutralised the two terrorists.

Major Ankesh’s mother Kiran Lata said that she was proud that her son had led his team and fought the terrorists bravely for the nation. She added that during a telephonic conversation Major Ankesh told her that he had dedicated the medal to his late father BN Jarial.

In a rare rebuke to Pakistan, China has asked it to take adequate measures to upgrade security mechanisms and protect nationals following a suicide blast targeting a convoy of Chinese engineers working on the Gwadar port project in the troubled Baluchistan province late on Friday night. – File photo

New Delhi, August 21

In a rare rebuke to Pakistan, China has asked it to take adequate measures to upgrade security mechanisms and protect nationals following a suicide blast targeting a convoy of Chinese engineers working on the Gwadar port project in the troubled Baluchistan province late on Friday night.

China urged Pakistan’s “relevant departments at all levels” to investigate the matter and severely punish the perpetrator. The Chinese Embassy statement also asked Pakistan officials to take practical and effective measures “to accelerate, to implement, (and) strengthen whole-process security measures and upgrade security cooperation mechanisms to ensure that similar incidents do not happen”.

Chinese and Pakistani media outlets have reported the death of two children and injuries to one Chinese worker. The Pakistan Interior Ministry said the suicide bomber targeted a convoy of three vehicles carrying Chinese nationals and a police contingent. The investigating team is also due to identify the nature of the blast.

This was a much stronger reaction than the previous one by Beijing to an attack on a bus last month in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that killed nine Chinese engineers working on a dam project which, like Gwadar, is part of the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. — TNS

The group was detained by Taliban; Indians were taken for verification; Afghan Sikh, Hindus turned back

Photo for representation only. AP/PTI file

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 21

The Government is likely to send an aircraft to evacuate Indians from Kabul after they were released from Taliban custody and have been asked to wait near the airport.   

Earlier in the morning, the Taliban released over 200 people, many of them Indian nationals and some of them Afghan Sikhs and Hindus, it had taken into custody as they were approaching the Kabul airport for flights out of Afghanistan.

While the Indian nationals were taken to the local police station for verification of their documents, the Afghan Hindus and Sikhs were turned back. Some of the Afghan Hindus and Sikhs are locals while those from outside are huddled at Gurdwara Karta-e-Parwan.

The story was broken by Al-Itteha that said Taliban affiliates, most likely fighters of the Haqqani network, had taken more than 150 people, most of them Indian nationals, from near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

These people included a number of Afghan citizens and Afghan Sikhs, but most of them were ordinary Indian citizens.

Quoting a person who was travelling with his wife, the group had left for the airport in eight buses at 1 am but could not enter the airport. As they were waiting outside, several unarmed Taliban members came to their side and, after beating several of them, took them all to Tarkhil, Kabul.

The person and his wife threw themselves out of the vehicle and went back to the city.

Taliban spokesman Ahmadullah Waseq denied the allegations of abduction in an interview with the daily Al-Information. He said members of the group were present around Hamid Karzai International Airport and would not allow people to enter the airport.

New Delhi: The Army, Navy and Air Force chiefs will be visiting the National Defence Academy (NDA) this week to review the training and administrative arrangements for the intake of women cadets, work on which was already initiated early this year.

Sources in the defence and security establishment said that the visit by Army chief General M.M. Naravane, Navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh and Air Force chief R.K.S Bhadauria on 20 August had already been scheduled at the beginning of the month, before the Supreme Court passed an interim order allowing women to sit for the academy’s entrance exam.

They added that the visit of the three chiefs has no relation to the court’s order that was passed Wednesday.

“The visit was scheduled earlier this month to review the training and administrative arrangements for women cadets. Additional infrastructure to provide for women cadets has been approved earlier and should come up in a time-bound manner. Gender equality has been an issue, which has been actively debated and found positive response in the Services,” a source told ThePrint.

The discussion on the induction of women into the armed services through the NDA had been ongoing and was finding support amongst the leadership, the source added.

ThePrint reported in June that the NDA is being expanded and its annual intake of military cadets will be progressively increased by around 400 to cater to the shortfall of officers in the armed forces.

The increase in seats is also to cater to the bigger demand for training of foreign cadets and ground duty cadets of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

A project for enhancement of NDA infrastructure was also rolled out this year keeping in mind a possible intake of women cadets in the institution.

Also read: Sainik schools will admit girls too, must ensure equal representation for women: Modi on I-Day

Women have long been part of armed forces

The induction of women into the armed services via the NDA will not be the first such instance.

Sources said the Armed Forces had inducted women as officers in the medical services a very long time ago

The Armed Forces Medical College in Pune has been training men and women medical officers for years. Military Nursing Officers have been in service since well before Independence and continue to serve the Defence Services, the source quoted above said.

Women were also inducted in the lower ranks in the Corps of Military Police recently.

“Permanent Commission to Short Service Commission women officers had been considered earlier in JAG and Education Branches and recently they have been given similar benefits in some other branches. Women officers have also been inducted for training into Army Aviation recently”, the source said.

As of February this year, there were 9,118 women officers serving in the three Services.

Women officers have been inducted into the Army since 1993. In the beginning, they were brought in for five years of service under the ‘Special Entry Scheme’. This was later converted into the Short Service Commission (SSC).

In 2008, a permanent commission was extended to women in streams of Judge Advocate General (JAG) and Army Education Corps.

In 2019, the Narendra Modi government granted permanent commission to women in all ten branches that allowed women officers through the Short Service Commission.

These were Signals, Engineers, Army Aviation, Army Air Defence, Electronics and Mechanical Engineers, Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance Corps and Intelligence.

However, the rule was applicable for the current serving SSC officers and future ones and was not retrospective.

Following an order of the Supreme Court, a total of 147 additional women SSC officers of the Army were granted permanent commission. But combat roles for women in the Army are yet to be opened up due to a wide range of reasons.

(Edited by Manasa Mohan)

Tweaking of system needed to facilitate co-ed training

Photo for representational purpose only. File photo

IN a heartening reaffirmation of the hard-fought gender equality that is being increasingly felt in the defence forces, the portals of the academies for pre-commissioned training are set to open for women. It is another matter though that, as in every other small or big step taken towards parity and overcoming the misogynistic mindset despite proving themselves as worthy defence and combat officers in the past nearly three decades, this battle too has been won through the court. Defending yet again women’s equal right to recruitment in the army, the Supreme Court, in its interim order on Wednesday, cleared one of the last hurdles that still smacks of discrimination. It allowed women candidates to take the NDA and Naval Academy exams scheduled for September 5 this year, subject to the final decision.

Excluding women from taking the test is a grave violation of the broad intent of last year’s orders of the SC that allowed permanent commission to women officers. To prevent the irreparable damage that this miss would have caused to women’s rights, the SC direction to the UPSC to issue a corrigendum is timely. The new rule must be widely publicised so that all eligible and aspiring women candidates could compete for recruitment as cadet officers.

The SC directive should goad the policymakers to take heed and shed their resistance to gender equality. As the SC noted, it is indeed regretful that the Army has been more reluctant than the Air Force and the Navy to fully accommodate women officers in its ranks. It is prone to dithering till ordered to act by the courts. The forces would do well to accept that women officers are very much here to stay and soar to heights and that gender neutrality is non-negotiable. It is time for the forces to adapt themselves towards a compatible co-educational ethos and infrastructure for women in all their institutes of training, and tweak the system, keeping in mind the technical intricacies peculiar to their work culture.

In the time it took to jump out of IAF’s C-119 and park the jeep in Dhaka Cantt, the CO of 2 Para & his men had passed into legion, their exploits forever in texts studied by professional soldiers

Sujan Dutta

Fabric is synonymous with the name of Tangail. The warp and weft of the Tangail saree is known in every Bengali home and the wider world of women who drape the garment. Whether it is cotton or silk or a mix of the two, the Tangail saree, known for its plain body and rich border, handloomed by generations of weavers is now generic.

Fabric covered the skies over Tangail, the town the saree is named after, 90-odd kilometres north-west of Dhaka in the early evening of December 11, 1971. Ripstop nylon billowed like domes of military green as Indian soldiers of the 2 Para battalion group made what remains the only airborne operation of its kind led by a commander who was the first out of an Indian Air Force cargo plane with his jeep.

In three days, Lt Colonel Kulwant Singh Pannu, later Major General, would also walk into the Dacca International Hotel, take a wash, and then the “flamboyant Commanding Officer of 2 Para spoke to reporters”, according to military historian Arjun Subramaniam, who has seen the unit’s archives. The hotel was designated a safe zone by the United Nations and the Red Cross.

Two days later, Pannu would also bound off the jeep after parking in the grounds of the headquarters of Pakistan’s eastern command, brush past a stern sentry with his adjutant Capt Nirbhay Sharma and the Bangladesh Mukti Bahini leading light Kader ‘Tiger’ Siddiqui and hand over to AAK Niazi a message from General Nagra: “Abdullah,” it said, “it’s game over, surrender.”

(Major General GC Nagra headed the 101 Communications Zone and knew Niazi).

In the time that it took to jump out of the Indian Air Force C-119 ‘Packet’ and park the jeep in Dhaka Cantonment, Lt Col Pannu and his men had passed into legion, their exploits forever in texts studied by professional soldiers.

“I was returning to Tangail from one of our headquarters at Mohanandapur village when the Indian Army paratroopers started landing near Poongli,” wrote Anwarul Ham, a former ambassador and then second-in-command of the Mukti Bahini in Tangail.https://2c68aeb3d7cef6cbae293b8cb57bd180.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“It was quite a sight. I was 1.5 miles away and I ran to greet them. I introduced myself to Lt Col Pannu. He made two requests: to disperse the crowd of villagers (who were gawking) and to arrange for local volunteers to help carry the load and push the artillery guns and jeeps to the road.”

Three of the four guns had fallen into ponds. One landed on the roof of a village house. The battalion group that had landed comprised elements of a field battery and medics. The drop was spread over a wide area, by one estimate over 20 km.

It was tasked to secure the Poongli bridge and the adjacent ferry on the Louhajang river that branched from the wide Jamuna. Securing the bridge would cut off battalions of Pakistan’s 93 Brigade that were falling back to Tangail and Dhaka from Mymensingh and Jamalpur. The operation was deep behind enemy lines, the battalion group having flown from Kalaikunda and Dum Dum in West Bengal. They had linked up with 1 Maratha Light Infantry, who were already in the thick of operations battling their way through East Pakistan from Tura in Meghalaya.

To fulfil his brief, Pannu had to rally round his men and equipment, moving in a wide arc as night fell. Having rounded up a bulk of his men, he prepared to take the bridge. Four artillery guns could be made operational for the charge. Most of the Pakistanis fled but that same night there were three counter-attacks on Poongli bridge.

“I came face to face with bone-chilling scenes of last night’s battle. Corpses of hundreds of enemy soldiers littered the road, bodies from one side of the bridge to another. We walked with care so as to not step on the dead,” wrote Dr Nuran Nabi, a lieutenant of Tiger Siddiqui’s force in Dhaka’s ‘The Daily Star,’ some 30 years after the event.

The 2 Para group, having linked up with 1 Maratha Light Infantry, then rolled cautiously towards Dhaka on the Mirzapur-Jaydebpur Road, reaching Milestone 26, its destination, by the evening of December 15. They were then tasked to turn west and reach Dhaka through the Mirpur bridge. The bridge was staunchly defended even though, by December 15, the war was collapsing for Pakistan.

“We lost three — killed in action. There were 41 enemy casualties but we were at the gates of Dhaka by midnight,” Nirbhay Sharma, who was adjutant to Pannu and who retired as a Lieutenant General (and then became Governor of Arunachal and Mizoram), has written and said in multiple interviews.

The next day, Pannu, Sharma and Tiger Siddiqui were to take the message to Niazi. Pannu, who had tied up with Tiger Siddiqui after the airdrop in Tangail, had taken him along on the battles through to Dhaka. He wanted him along not only for the camaraderie they had struck, but also because of the clear idea drilled into Indian officers that this was not a country they were to occupy but help the Mukti Bahini.

Such was fate, however, for the men who fought alongside that Tiger Siddiqui had to be arrested by the Indian Army in later weeks for having publicly bayoneted surrendered Razakars (Pakistan’s collaborators) personally in the cricket stadium, an incident that was filmed.

Before the entry to Dhaka cantonment, however, the Indian Army’s Eastern Command Chief of Staff, Lt Gen JFR Jacob, had proclaimed from Calcutta that Indian paratroopers had surrounded the East Pakistan capital. Even if it was an overstatement, it carried weight because by that time Lt General Sagat Singh’s forces from the east had crossed the Meghna river.

The 2 Paras led by Pannu were among the first to actually march into Dhaka and extract that famous confession from Niazi. Niazi could not meet Pannu’s gaze, wrote Nirbhay Sharma. He was unshaven — “Pindi mein baithe haramzadon ne marwadiya. The (expletive) people in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s General Headquarters, have betrayed me with false promises of help.”

The remarkable thing about Pannu’s leadership was that the Indian Army had only one officer with personal experience of an airborne operation till then: Lt Gen Inder Singh Gill, who as a Lieutenant was a commando in Greece for the Allied Forces in 1942. He was Director of Military Operations at Army Headquarters in 1971.

Lt Col KS Pannu’s MVC citation reads:

“Lieutenant Colonel KS Pannu was commanding a battalion, which was airdropped near Tangail on December 11, 1971. The task involved cutting enemy routes of withdrawal and preventing his build-up at Tangail. This also involved the capture of an enemy position on a vital bridge at Poongli. The drop of the battalion was widely dispersed and Lieutenant Colonel Pannu had to move from one location to another under enemy fire to collect his platoons. It was entirely due to his cool courage, utter disregard for his personal safety and his timely and skilful direction that his battalion captured the enemy position at Poongli.

Under his able leadership, the battalion repulsed numerous counter-attacks, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Pannu displayed conspicuous gallantry, exemplary leadership, determination and devotion to duty in keeping with the best traditions of the Army.”

Thousands continue to flock to Kabul’s airport, braving checkpoints manned by Taliban fighters as they seek desperately to get on evacuation flights out

Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 19, 2021. — AP/PTI

Kabul, August 20

Taliban fighters tortured and killed members of an ethnic minority in Afghanistan after recently overrunning their village, Amnesty International said, fuelling fears that they will again impose a brutal rule, even as they urged imams to push a message of unity at the first gathering for Friday prayers since the capital was seized.

Terrified that the new de facto rulers would commit such abuses, thousands have raced to Kabul’s airport desperate to flee following the Taliban’s stunning blitz through the country. Others have taken to the streets to protest the takeover — acts of defiance that Taliban fighters have violently suppressed.

The Taliban have sought to project moderation and have pledged to restore security and forgive those who fought them in the 20 years since a US-led invasion. Ahead of Friday prayers, leaders urged to imams to use sermons to appeal for unity, urge people not to flee the country, and to counter “negative propaganda” about them.

But many Afghans are skeptical, and the Amnesty report provided more evidence that undercut the Taliban’s claims they have changed.

The rights group said that its researchers spoke to eyewitnesses in Ghazni province who recounted how the Taliban killed nine Hazara men in the village of Mundarakht on July 4-6. It said six of the men were shot, and three were tortured to death.

The brutality of the killings was “a reminder of the Taliban’s past record, and a horrifying indicator of what Taliban rule may bring,” said Agnes Callamard, the head of Amnesty International.

The group warned that many more killings may gone unreported because the Taliban have cut cellphone services in many areas they’ve captured to prevent images from there from being published.

Separately, Reporters without Borders expressed alarm at the news that Taliban fighters killed the family member of an Afghan journalist working for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on Wednesday.

“Sadly, this confirms our worst fears,” said Katja Gloger of the press freedom group’s German section. “The brutal action of the Taliban show that the lives of independent media workers in Afghanistan are in acute danger.”         Many Afghans fear a return to the Taliban’s harsh rule in the late 1990s, when the group largely confined women to their homes, banned television and music, chopped off the hands of suspected thieves and held public executions.

Thousands continue to flock to Kabul’s airport, braving checkpoints manned by Taliban fighters as they seek desperately to get on evacuation flights out.

Mohammad Naim, who has been among the crowd at the airport for four days trying to escape the country, said he had to put his children on the roof of a car on the first day to save them from being crushed by the mass of people. He saw other children killed after they were unable to get out of the way.

Naim, who said he had been an interpreter for US forces, said he had urged others not to the come to airport.

“It is a very, very crazy situation right now and I hope the situation gets better because I saw kids dying, it is very terrible,” he said.

The Pentagon said Thursday that about 2,000 people were brought out on American flights on each of the previous two days, and the State Department said 6,000 more were expected to leave that day. But thousands of Americans and their Afghan allies may be in need of escape.

Dozens of other flights have already brought hundreds more Western nationals and Afghan workers to Europe and elsewhere.

Chaos at the airport itself has sometimes hindered flights, but getting to the facility is the major challenge. Germany was sending two helicopters to Kabul to help bring small numbers of people from elsewhere in the city to the airport, officials said.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison noted that Australian citizens have not been able to be evacuated from outside Kabul, and even in the capital the situation is difficult.

“The situation in Kabul does remain chaotic,” he said.

In recent days, some Afghans have protested the Taliban in several cities — a remarkable show of defiance that fighters often met with violence. At least one person was killed Wednesday at a rally in the eastern city of Jalalabad, after demonstrators lowered the Taliban’s flag and replaced it with the Afghan tricolour. Another person was seriously wounded at a protest a day later in Nangarhar province.

The demonstrations have come to the capital as well. On Thursday, a procession of cars and people near Kabul’s airport carried long black, red and green banners in honor of the Afghan flag — a banner that is becoming a symbol of defiance.

Meanwhile, opposition figures gathering in the last area of the country not under Taliban rule talked of launching an armed resistance. It was not clear how serious a threat they posed given that Taliban fighters overran nearly the entire country in a matter of days with little resistance from Afghan forces.

In addition to concerns about Taliban abuses, officials have warned that Afghanistan’s already weakened economy could crumble further without the massive international aid that sustained the toppled Western-backed government. The UN says there are dire food shortages and experts said the country was severely in need of cash with much of the government’s funds abroad frozen.

After the Taliban overran Kabul the market used by many in the capital to exchange money was closed down.

Underscoring the difficulties the Taliban will face in returning the country to normal life, trader Aminullah Amin said Friday that it would stay closed for the time being. There was just too much uncertainty surrounding exchange rates, how the Taliban might regulate the market, and the possibility of looting.

“We have not decided to reopen the markets yet,” he said. — AP

Smoke rises next to the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 15, 2021, as the Taliban wrests control of Kabul. AP/PTI file photo

Skojpe, August 20

As thousands of people thronged Kabul airport in a bid to escape the advancing Taliban on August 15, Kam Air pilot Jovica Rajhl and his colleague had to resort to subterfuge to reach their plane and take off safely.

Rajhl, 54, a North Macedonian, said that ahead of the fall of Kabul, his employer Kam Air, the largest Afghan private airline, had contingency plans to rebase its three Boings 737 and three Airbus 340 to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

But the advance of the Taliban was too quick.

Many Afghans in the company were “discussing … plans B and C in case of Taliban arrival … there was a great fear among Afghans”, Rajhl told Reuters on Friday in Skopje, where he lives.

Rajhl said that he and his colleague were told to prepare for a flight to Kyiv on Sunday, August 15, shortly after news reached them that the Taliban had taken over government buildings in Kabul.

“The airport was completely open … all the security people were gone,” he said.

Thousands of Afghans hoping to board planes out of the country flocked to Kabul airport. The capital has swelled with people from other provinces fleeing the advance of the Taliban.

Rajhl’s Boeing 737 was parked away from the main boarding platform, where throngs of people “were climbing and falling from ladders”, he said.

Three Kam Air planes were already blocked by the crowds.

“Our biggest fortune was that no one paid attention to us. One of us was not in uniform but in civilian clothes,” he said.

Passengers from their flight were told to board quickly and as night fell, Rajhl and his crew decided to start engines and perform take-off procedures in complete darkness to avoid drawing the attention of the crowd.

“It was good that the people on the other side (of the runway), and I am sorry about them, could only hear noise but saw nothing moving with its lights on.”

Shortly before takeoff, the crew had been warned via radio that they would have only 10 minutes to depart, after which their “security will not be guaranteed on ground and in the air”.

Rajhl’s plane finally took off at 20:32 local time and, after refueling in Tbilisi, Georgia, made it to Kyiv.

In October 2017, the Army began the process to acquire seven lakh rifles, 44,000 light machine guns and 44,600 carbines

Photo for representational purpose only. iStock

New Delhi, August 20

India has finalised a deal with Russia to buy a sizeable number of AK-103 series of assault rifles for the Indian Army under the provisions of emergency procurement, people familiar with the development said on Friday.

The Army is implementing a mega infantry modernisation programme under which a large number of light machine guns, battle carbines and assault rifles are being purchased to replace its ageing and obsolete weapons.

“A deal has been finalised with Russia for direct purchase of a batch of AK-103 series of assault rifles,” one of the persons cited above said without specifying the number of rifles or the cost of procurement.

There is no official announcement on the deal yet.

The people said the rifles are being procured under the emergency financial powers granted to the three services to make urgent purchases.

In October 2017, the Indian Army began the process to acquire around seven lakh rifles, 44,000 light machine guns (LMGs) and nearly 44,600 carbines.

The government has accorded priority to the modernisation of the armed forces and the infantry modernisation has been initiated as part of the larger process to further enhance the combat capability of the Army.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approved a proposal on putting up relevant details of planned procurements by the three services on their or the defence ministry’s website.

“To promote ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and provide more transparency in the capital acquisition process, aligning with the aspirations of industry, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved a proposal mandating the service headquarters to publish the relevant details on the service headquarters/MoD website within one week of receipt of approvals,” the defence ministry said in a statement.

“The details shared will be subject to sensitivities keeping the security aspect in mind,” it added. PTI