Monthly Archives: August 2018

1. JOURNEY OF SINGLAR IN WORLD WAR-II
2. ARMOURED TRACTORS DEPLOYED ON MOHALI-CHANDIGARH BORDER TO TACKLE ACTIVISTS DEMANDING RELEASE OF BANDI SINGHS
3. PAKISTAN’S FIRST HINDU FEMALE CIVIL SERVANT POSTED AS ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER IN PUNJAB
4. WOMAN PULLED ALIVE FROM RUBBLE IN TURKEY A WEEK AFTER EARTHQUAKE
5. PRINCIPAL INTEGRATED FINANCIAL ADVISER (PIFA) POSTED IN THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE (MOD) UNDER THE JUDICIAL SCANNER OF VARIOUS BENCHES OF ARMED FORCES TRIBUNALS (AFT).
6. AERO INDIA 2023
7. HARYANA’S FIRST NCC ACADEMY PROJECT AT KARNAL VILLAGE IN A LIMBO
8. CHINA-US BALLOON FRACAS
9. MANISH TEWARI | WHAT DID THE BALLOON TELL CHINA ABOUT US?
10. AFTER 14 YEARS, SAINIK SCHOOL IN REWARI GETS OWN CAMPUS
11. GOVERNMENT’S FOCUS: DESIGN, DEVELOP, MAKE IN INDIA
12. TRANSFORMED DEFENCE SECTOR: PM AT AERO INDIA
13. MANALI-LEH NH RESTORED TO TRAFFIC VIA ATAL TUNNEL
14. CRPF LIKELY TO GET INDEPENDENT AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY IN VALLEY
15. PAK, US SET TO BEGIN SECOND ROUND OF DEFENCE DIALOGUE
16. IS LOOKS TO RECRUIT CADRE OF BANNED PFI, SETS OFF ALARM

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THE EXPRESS INDIA NEWS :NEWSPAPER

Tribune News Service

Gaurav Kanthwal 

Mohali, February 13

Punjab Police on Monday deployed seven armoured tractors on Mohali-Chandigarh border to tackle Bandi Singh release activists on the dividing roads of Sectors 51-52 and Sectors 52-53.

Two bullet-proof tractors have been stationed on the dividing road of Sectors 51-52 while five at the Sectors 52-53 border.

Police said the need to deploy improvised armoured vehicles was felt after the violence on February 8 when protesters used tractors and horses to intimidate the police personnel. 

Cops said the improvised bullet-proof tractors, with red beacons atop, had been brought from the international border area districts of the Punjab where they were deployed to counter the terrorist activities.

“The improvised vehicles were requisitioned after the Dinanagar terrorist incident when terrorists fled into the swampy areas and fields to take cover,” said a Punjab Police official.

DSP City-1 Harinder Singh Mann said, “During the violence on February 8, the protesters used tractors and horses to injure police personnel. The armoured vehicles are specially designed to handle such situations.”

Punjab Police officials said each border area district police is equipped with five such vehicles.

Armoured tractors releasing dark plumes of smoke and then quietly dozing off in one corner made the day for onlookers at the protest site on the road separating Sector 52 and 53 today.

In all, seven armoured tractors have been stationed by the Punjab Police on the roads separating Sector 51 and 52 (two), and Sector 52 & 53 (five) to tackle the protesters seeking the release of Bandi Singhs.

Police officials said the need to deploy these improvised armoured vehicles was felt after violence on February 8 when the protesters used tractors and horses to intimidate the police personnel. These bullet proof tractors, with red beacons, have been brought from the international border areas of Punjab where they were deployed to counter terrorist activities, said the police officials.

The DSP (City 1), Harinder Singh Mann, said, “During violence on February 8, the protesters used tractors and horses to harm police personnel. The armoured vehicles are specially designed to handle such situations.” Anti-riot drills are being undertaken, across the state to keep police personnel in shape. The mounted police carried out a drill at the spot on how to counter the charge from armed horsemen. Meanwhile, 31 representatives of the protesters staged a peaceful two-hour sit-in on the Sector 52-53 road. — TNS

Brought from border areas

These bullet-proof tractors have been brought from the international border areas of Punjab where these were deployed to counter terrorist activities, said police officials.

Last week, on the fourth of February, fighter jets of the United States Air Force shot down a Chinese balloon that had been drifting through US airspace. The discovery and the subsequent shooting down of the balloon had other inevitable repercussions including and not limited to the strategic arena. It compelled the US secretary of state Anthony Blinken to call off his first trip to Beijing.

The question, however, uppermost on everyone’s mind is that in this day and age of satellites and drones, why on earth would China fly a balloon into US territory?

For whatever “extraordinary” intelligence a balloon may or may not be able to collect, it constitutes a very obvious dare, because it would not only be a clear transgression of a country’s airspace but, more importantly, a blatant violation of its very sovereignty

The Chinese, of course, dismiss the entire episode as a “weather ship” that had drifted off-course and accused the United States of being irresponsible. Chinese foreign office spokeswoman Mao Ning stated, “The Chinese side has repeatedly shared information on the unintended entry of the unmanned Chinese civilian airship into US airspace. I would like to stress that the US’s downing of the unmanned Chinese civilian airship by force is unacceptable and irresponsible.”

However l’affaire balloon raises deeper questions that have a material bearing on global dynamics that are in a state of flux since the February of 2022 when Russia decided to invade Ukraine.

It would be instructive to recall that, just three weeks prior to the Russian transgression onto sovereign Ukrainian soil on February 4, 2022, both Russia and China had inked a memorandum entitled “joint statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the international relations entering a new era and the global sustainable development”.

Substantive portions of Part-111 of the joint statement almost read like the declaration of a military alliance. “The sides believe that certain States, military and political alliances and coalitions seek to obtain, directly or indirectly, unilateral military advantages to the detriment of the security of others, including by employing unfair competition practices, intensify geopolitical rivalry, fuel antagonism and confrontation, and seriously undermine the international security order and global strategic stability. The sides oppose further enlargement of Nato and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologised Cold War approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilisational, cultural and historical backgrounds, and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other States. The sides stand against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region and remain highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region. Russia and China have made consistent efforts to build an equitable, open and inclusive security system in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) that is not directed against third countries and that promotes peace, stability and prosperity…”

While China’s support for the Russian misadventure in Ukraine has been muted so far, it has not hesitated over the past few years to flex its muscles in its neighborhood whether qua Taiwan, India or its other neighbours in the South or East China Sea where it asserts it has historical territorial claims.

Catching up with the US has now been almost a Chinese fixation going back to the global economic meltdown of 2008 that incidentally followed China’s coming out debut in the form of the Beijing Olympics. However, flying balloons over US soil and testing its red lines is a very in-your-face provocation even by Chinese standards.

The Pentagon spokesperson, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, claimed that the US military establishment was cognisant of at least four balloon flights before it detected the latest Chinese contraption. Three of these ostensibly occurred during the Trump presidency and one under the current Biden administration.

If this assertion is correct, then it goes to further establish that China is now willing to push the envelope even vis-a-vis the United States. However, given the large gap in the current military capacities of China qua the United States of America, it remains moot as to what China really hopes to achieve by such actions.

A partial explanation could be that, for the past one decade, since President Xi Jinping’s ascent to power, China’s belligerence has had a virtual free run without being proscribed in any effective manner whatsoever. Its aggressiveness in the South China Sea, its ringfencing of Hong Kong through a new security law, its foray across the Line of Actual Control with India and its opacity in the initial weeks of Covid-19 have at most been met by proforma condemnation or individual responses from the people of countries aggrieved by its actions.

Perhaps emboldened by the US preoccupation once again with Europe and Nato that, in addition to being a military alliance, it’s also one of the pillars of the Anglo-Saxon civilisational construct, the Chinese may have decided to map the limits of US’s tolerance almost as a war game would do.

A purely defensive reaction by the United States in only neutralising the balloon may actually validate the Chinese thesis that the US is risk-averse. After the twin involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan it does not have the appetite left for a sustained confrontation. Whatever energy it has left is already being consumed in Europe.

While Russia keeps the battle of attrition in Ukraine on a slow burn, thereby absorbing the strategic and tactical attention of the US and its Nato allies, China probably feels it has the space to test its own strategic doctrines. A task that may well be going according to what the Chinese may have diagrammed as the trajectory of a US response to such a provocation. All this again portends that the shifting sands of the global strategic balance may actually be in a deeper churn than what is discernable on the surface.

As an aside, what if a similar Chinese balloon is found floating over India and the Chinese claim ownership of it stating it is a meteorological manifestation for plotting weather patterns when clearly it appears to be an intelligence gathering operation? Would the government of the day have the gumption and should it put a missile through such a contrivance in the first place? Strategic thinkers both inside and outside government would be well advised to collectively put on their thinking caps.…

Raises questions over equitable management of use of space as a domain

C Uday Bhaskar

Director, Society for Policy Studies

ON February 9, the US House of Representatives unanimously backed a resolution condemning the recent incursion of a Chinese spy balloon into US airspace and described it as ‘a brazen violation of United States sovereignty’. The final vote tally was 419 for and none against. This unanimity over China is significant, given the deeply fractured political divide in the US legislature. It is also indicative of the bipartisan consensus over China that has been gathering traction in the US since the Trump era.

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For India, the way Beijing deals with the row, both with the US at the bilateral level and the global community, would have vital cues in relation to the standoff at the LAC.

The troubled bilateral relationship between the US and China that had shown the potential for a slight degree of improvement with the resumption of high-level dialogue has gone rapidly south in a visibly discordant manner over the spy balloon. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to visit China in early February, but this has been aborted, even as Beijing has accused Washington of overreacting.

More details are emerging over what Beijing claimed was a civilian weather balloon that had gone off course and while a definitive conclusion is yet to be reached about the nature of the ‘violation’, this is a matter that has a relevance for all of China’s interlocutors, including India. Furthermore, this issue raises certain complex questions over the equitable and consensual management of the use of space as a domain and the demarcation between near-space and outer-space boundaries being part of the new global commons.

The exchange of sharp words and related acrimony between the US and China peaked with US President Joe Biden ordering that the truant balloon be shot down. The Pentagon carried out the task on February 4 by firing a missile at the balloon and bringing it down off the coast near South Carolina. This use of military ordnance by the US is a significant punctuation in the bilateral relationship and will pose a challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Two strands merit preliminary review. The first is the accusation by the US that the balloon in question is part of a vast fleet of such surveillance platforms used surreptitiously by the Chinese military and that the PLA has ‘conducted similar operations in over 40 countries across five continents’. This includes India and Japan among other nations.

While it is accepted that most nations with adequate capability do engage in surveillance and espionage activities regularly – the current Chinese balloon raises some intriguing questions. Such balloons, whether tethered or untethered, are widely used and classified as ‘near- space systems’ operating at altitudes between 20 and 200 km beyond the earth’s surface.

If indeed this was a civilian weather platform, as claimed by Beijing, it is not clear why it was being deployed at such distant ranges far away from China. And if there was a compelling meteorological reason for such deployment, Beijing could have informed the countries concerned about the trajectory of the wayward balloon, which would be determined by wind currents and space turbulence. This kind of transparency would have allayed any anxiety about the nature of such data-gathering (now seen as an intelligence mission surveillance) in those nations that have a security concern apropos of China.

That Beijing chose a degree of tenacious opacity over routine transparency in this matter has led to predictable doubts about Chinese intent and credibility. The assertion by the US that based on the imagery obtained from its U-2 spy planes, it has concluded that the equipment on the balloon was meant for ‘intelligence purposes’ and that this was inconsistent with ‘equipment onboard weather balloons’ adds to this perception about Chinese perfidy.

The second strand pertains to the manner in which the US and China have dealt with this issue of airspace transgression and the escalation that has been witnessed over the last fortnight, culminating with the US using a missile to ‘protect’ its sovereignty. It is more than evident that the US-China relationship is moving towards greater discord with seemingly intractable causal factors. This was amply reflected in the State of the Union Address by President Biden last week.

In one of the abiding paradoxes of the last decade, tension with China over what is perceived by many of its interlocutors as unambiguous belligerence and/or covert use of military muscle to snatch unilateral tactical advantage (viz South China Sea and Ladakh-Galwan) has not prevented a robust trade and economic relationship. The US, Japan and India are in a similar space and will need to evolve individual and collective approaches to prudently manage this contradiction.

For India, the manner in which Beijing deals with the balloon controversy, both with the US at the bilateral level and the global community, would have important cues in relation to the current standoff across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and the long festering, unresolved territorial dispute. On the tactical plane, if the US allegation that the PLA has a vast fleet of surveillance balloons operating in near-space is indeed true, what does this mean for the LAC and the military standoff in the more contested regions?

On balance, it appears that there is more than hot air in the ballooning controversy and that it has set off angry inter-continental ripples for now.

PTI

Lahore, February 13

A doctor who is said to be Pakistan’s first Hindu female civil servant is now the assistant commissioner and administrator in Punjab province’s Hassanabdal city, the first in the town’s history, the media reported on Monday.

Dr Sana Ramchand Gulwani, 27, joined the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) after passing the Central Superior Services (CSS) exam 2020.

She assumed charge as the assistant commissioner and administrator of Hassanabdal city in the Attock district, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Gulwani cleared the examination in her first attempt and was, according to many activists from the Hindu community, the first Pakistani woman from the community to have passed the exam since the Partition, The Express Tribune newspaper said.

She grew up in Sindh province’s Shikarpur city and became a doctor on her parents’ wish before enrolling in the Federal Public Service Commission, the report said.

“I do not know if I am the first one, but (I) have never heard of someone (female) from my community even appearing for the exam,” Gulwani had said after clearing her exam.

80,000 people were in hospital, and more than 1 million in temporary shelters

Antakya/Elbistan, February 13

Rescuers pulled a woman alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey on Monday, broadcaster CNN Turk reported, a week after a major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria killing more than 33,000 people.

Sibel Kaya, 40, was rescued in southern Gaziantep province, some 170 hours after the first of two quakes struck the region, the report said. Rescue workers in Kahramanmaras had also made contact with three survivors, believed to be a mother, daughter and baby, in the ruins of a building.

With chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries rose above 33,000 on Sunday and looked set to keep growing. It was the deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939.

On Sunday, rescue teams from Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus pulled a man alive from a collapsed building in Turkey, about 160 hours after the quake struck, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said.

“Rescue work to remove the man from the rubble lasted more than four hours,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging platform, alongside a video showing rescuers taking a man from rubble and carrying him away.

“The work was carried out at night with a risk to life coming from a possible collapse of structures.” In a central district of one of the worst hit cities, Antakya in southern Turkey, business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.

Residents and aid workers who came from other cities cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said the government will deal firmly with looters, as he faces questions over his response to the earthquake ahead of an election scheduled for June that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power.

The quake is now the sixth most deadly natural disaster this century, behind the 2005 tremor that killed at least 73,000 in Pakistan.

A father and daughter, a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among other survivors pulled from the ruins of collapsed buildings in Turkey on Sunday, but such scenes are becoming rare as the number of dead climbed relentlessly.

At a funeral near Reyhanli, veiled women wailed and beat their chests as bodies were unloaded from lorries – some in closed wood coffins, others in uncovered coffins, and still others just wrapped in blankets.

Some residents sought to retrieve what they could from the destruction.

In Elbistan, epicentre of an aftershock almost as powerful as Monday’s initial 7.8 magnitude quake, 32-year-old mobile shop owner Mustafa Bahcivan said he had come into town almost daily since then. On Sunday, he sifted through rubble searching for any of his phones that might still be intact and sellable.

“This used to be one of the busiest streets. Now it’s completely gone,” he said.

SYRIA AID COMPLICATED BY YEARS OF WAR

In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving homeless yet again many people who had already been displaced several times by a decade-old civil war.

The region has received little aid compared with government-held areas.

The office of PIFA represents defence (finance) to advise the military on financial matters
They are the one who sit on the implementation of the orders passed by the various courts including the AFTs on benefits to military veterans and other related beneficiaries. PIFA is headed by officers of Defence and Accounts Services (IDAS).
In a recent case related to a 90-year-old veteran, the Chandigarh bench of AFT has recorded highly objectionable conduct of the officer in the office of PIFA for misleading the tribunal.

While dropping initiation of criminal proceedings against PIFA office, division bench comprising Justice Dharam Chand Chaudhary, judicial member and Air Marshal Manavendra Singh, administrative member of AFT Chandigarh, observed, “We hope that the PIFA shall improve its functioning…”
The AFT also directed the registry to convey the order to the office of PIFA for future guidance.
Even the Lucknow bench, while hearing a matter in which despite more than two years, the order was not complied with, observed that the act of not implementing the order by questioning its legality after a lapse of two years is nothing but a wilful disobedience of the order.

“We think it proper to issue notice to the PIFA, Army Headquarters New Delhi, to appear in person in this tribunal on the next date (March 22) to file reply as to why contempt proceedings be not initiated against her,” observed AFT’s Lucknow bench comprising Justice Umesh Chandra Srivastava, judicial member and Major General Sanjay Singh, administrative member.
The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) also observed that apparently PIFA is sitting over the order passed by this tribunal as a court of appeal and analysing the merit of the order by exercising a jurisdiction vested in a court of appeal.

This act of the PIFA comes within the purview of the order of contempt, it observed.
Meanwhile, sources confirmed that hundreds of files processed by the Army HQ for implementation of AFT orders, which are covered by Supreme Court and high court judgments and by instructions issued by the MoD, are being held up due to multiple objections by PIFA, ultimately leading to embarrassment to the MoD and the Army in courts, which have now issued contempt notices for wilful non-compliance.

An officer dealing with the subject stated that it was the weakness of the MoD and Army in not pushing the files since the Army HQ is the ‘Competent Financial Authority’ which can overrule the PIFA who is only an ‘advisor’. The officer also pointed out that PIFA was under the wrong impression that its interpretation of policy can override court orders thereby undermining judicial authority.

Unnecessarily impeding financial concurrence to benefits granted to military widows and disabled veterans as well as “wilful disobedience” has brought the principal integrated financial adviser (PIFA) posted in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) under the judicial scanner of various benches of Armed Forces Tribunals (AFT)
There are several cases pending before different benches of AFTs where the tribunals have reprimanded the PIFA.

The office of PIFA represents defence (finance) to advise the military on financial matters
They are the one who sit on the implementation of the orders passed by the various courts including the AFTs on benefits to military veterans and other related beneficiaries. PIFA is headed by officers of Defence and Accounts Services (IDAS).
In a recent case related to a 90-year-old veteran, the Chandigarh bench of AFT has recorded highly objectionable conduct of the officer in the office of PIFA for misleading the tribunal.

While dropping initiation of criminal proceedings against PIFA office, division bench comprising Justice Dharam Chand Chaudhary, judicial member and Air Marshal Manavendra Singh, administrative member of AFT Chandigarh, observed, “We hope that the PIFA shall improve its functioning…”
The AFT also directed the registry to convey the order to the office of PIFA for future guidance.
Even the Lucknow bench, while hearing a matter in which despite more than two years, the order was not complied with, observed that the act of not implementing the order by questioning its legality after a lapse of two years is nothing but a wilful disobedience of the order.

“We think it proper to issue notice to the PIFA, Army Headquarters New Delhi, to appear in person in this tribunal on the next date (March 22) to file reply as to why contempt proceedings be not initiated against her,” observed AFT’s Lucknow bench comprising Justice Umesh Chandra Srivastava, judicial member and Major General Sanjay Singh, administrative member.
The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) also observed that apparently PIFA is sitting over the order passed by this tribunal as a court of appeal and analysing the merit of the order by exercising a jurisdiction vested in a court of appeal.

This act of the PIFA comes within the purview of the order of contempt, it observed.
Meanwhile, sources confirmed that hundreds of files processed by the Army HQ for implementation of AFT orders, which are covered by Supreme Court and high court judgments and by instructions issued by the MoD, are being held up due to multiple objections by PIFA, ultimately leading to embarrassment to the MoD and the Army in courts, which have now issued contempt notices for wilful non-compliance.

An officer dealing with the subject stated that it was the weakness of the MoD and Army in not pushing the files since the Army HQ is the ‘Competent Financial Authority’ which can overrule the PIFA who is only an ‘advisor’. The officer also pointed out that PIFA was under the wrong impression that its interpretation of policy can override court orders thereby undermining judicial authority.

Sarang helicopter display, Suryakiran aerobatic team along with Rafale, Tejas, Jaguar, Sukhoi-30 MKI promise a scintillating aerial display and flypast at Aero India 2023. 

Mesmerising aerial display left the audience spellbound at the inaugural session of the Aero India-2023 here on Monday. The metal birds soared high and performed breathtaking aerobatics and mid-air maneuvering as the five-day aerospace and defence show took off at the Air Force Station Yelahanka. There were displays by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited made Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, Light Combat Helicopters, Light Utility Helicopters and Sukhoi-30, and Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters, among others. 

Tribune News Service

Ajay Banerjee

Bengaluru, February 13

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday laid out India’s abilities as a manufacturer of military equipment and a partner of other countries in making the latest military equipment, besides emerging as an exporter on its own.

Inaugurating the 14th Aero India-2023 here, Modi said the government was changing policies.

More than 700 Indian and foreign defence companies besides delegates from around 100 countries, including several defence ministers, are participating in the five-day exhibition, considered the largest aerospace event in Asia.

F-35A makes ‘historic’ debut

• The US Air Force’s two newest fifth-generation supersonic multirole
• -35A aircraft made a historic debut at Aero India-2023 on Monday
• The two jets — F-35A Lightning II and F-35A Joint Strike Fighter — arrived at the Yelahanka air force station on the outskirts of Bengaluru
• Major General Julian C Cheater, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs, said, “F-35 represents the leading edge of US fighter technology”
• A statement by the US Consulate General in Chennai termed the arrival of the jets a historic debut”. TNS

“Earlier, Aero India was known as a platform to ‘sell to India’. We have changed that. Now, it is a platform to showcase nation’s strength as a potential defence partner.

Space 4th dimension of warfare

Space has emerged as the fourth dimension in warfare. Nations are developing niche technology. This includes militarisation of space. Compared to our neighbour, we are nowhere in space technology. —Giridhar Aramane, Defence Secretary

“India is not just a buyer, it is ready for a partnership with developed countries. Our technology is cost effective and credible,” said PM Modi.

Tejas fighter jets and the sea-going aircraft carrier INS Vikrant are examples of make in India, said Modi as he cited the new Tata airbus factory to produce C295 planes and the newly opened helicopter making factory at Tumakuru, Karnataka, to prove his point.

“India of 21st century will not miss any opportunity,” Modi told the audience, comprising foreign and Indian industry representatives and investors.

“Earlier, India was the biggest importer of weapons. Now, we export to 75 countries. In 2022-23, the value of exports was worth more than $1.5 billion (about Rs 14,000 crore). The aim is to reach $5 billion by 2024-25,” he noted.

“Defence as a sector and as a business has a lot of complexities. But India has transformed its defence sector in the past eight to nine years,” the PM said, adding “the government will soon be among the biggest exporters”.

He advised the Indian private sector to “not miss the opportunity”. “The presence of around 100 nations at the event is a testament to the world’s trust in India,” Modi said, noting that more than 800 exhibitors, including Indian MSMEs and startups, as well as well-renowned companies from around the world, were participation in the event.

Earlier, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asserted that India had become a promising manufacturing destination because of its business-friendly environment and cost competitiveness.

GE signs pact with shipyard ltd

General Electric’s subsidiary in India has signed a contract with Cochin Shipyard Limited to provide a comprehensive digital solutions package for the Indian Navy’s INS Vikrant, a ship powered by LM2500 marine gas turbines of GE.