Admiral DK Joshi, Navy ex-Chief

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 30

Former Navy Chief Admiral DK Joshi (retd) takes over as the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands at a time when India is planning to make the islands its foremost military strategic outreach towards the east.A major Indian Tri-services base exists at Port Blair but with the dynamics changing, India is upgrading its capacities — ramping up its airfields on the islands that will enable it to hold large surveillance planes, have greater number of warships and another floating repair dockyard that can repair ships at sea.All these are aimed at keeping an eye on Beijing’s growing economic and military reliance on the Strait of Malacca. Admiral Joshi will be administrative head of the islands that are some 1,230 km east of Visakhapatnam and lie in the Bay of Bengal.Admiral Joshi, who also headed the country’s only Tri-services Command at Andaman and Nicobar Islands, will help ease clearances. The Malacca Strait is located less than 100 km south of the southernmost part of the Indian islands.The ‘six degree’ channel — the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean — passes through it. Nearly 70,000 vessels pass through the strait annually, making it about 25 per cent of all global trade. In June, India started a permanent naval patrol of sea-shipping routes to the Malacca Strait.Indian warships are now present 24×7 at the western edge of the strategically vital straits — ‘looking’ at ship movement. Singapore is at its eastern edge. In the first week of June, the US Department of Defence had — in its report — highlighted why the Malacca Strait was crucial for China. “Malacca Strait is critical to the transport of natural gas and oil… China is particularly reliant on unimpeded sea lanes of communication like the South China Sea and Malacca Strait,” said the annual report to the Congress. “In 2016, approximately 80 per cent of China’s oil imports and 11 per cent of natural gas imports transited the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca,” the report had noted.China continues to look primarily to the Persian Gulf and Africa to satisfy its growing oil and gas demands, making the Malacca Strait even more important. China fears that India can interdict supplies in case of a conflict.Top sources have confirmed that the Navy is planning to position a greater number of assets on the islands.The P-8I series of surveillance planes will soon be stationed at INZ Baaz which is being expanded and so is the Shibpur naval air station.