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Army gives footage; ministers ‘not to speak out of turn’

Armymen patrol near LoC in Pallanwala sector, 70 km from Jammu. PTI

K V Prasad

Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 5

Amid the political clamour for authenticating the surgical strikes by the Indian Army on terror launch pads across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, the emphatic view among those tasked with security is that there is little room for such a concession.Doubting Thomases can continue to raise questions, but sources privy to the thinking in the higher echelons of the security establishment on the South Block told The Tribune that notwithstanding the vociferous demands, the government is unwilling to succumb to it.Across the border, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif continued to raise the temperature on developments in Jammu and Kashmir and maintained that without any investigation into the Uri incident, within a few hours, India blamed Pakistan for the attack.On his part, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is understood to have cautioned his Cabinet colleagues not to speak out of turn on the surgical strikes and leave the job to those entrusted to comment. The sources said the view is that succumbing to the demand of providing evidence would be a cowardly response. This categorical assertion came even as the Army handed over footage of the strikes recorded by the assault teams.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)“The laid-down procedure has been followed. The DGMO [Director General of Military Operations] briefed [about the surgical strikes]. It was not the Defence Minister, nor the PM and not the Home Minister. That was the right thing to do and they [Army] did it. There was a time when documents were submitted. Now clips are given and the clips have been given,” Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir told reporters here.As the debate intensified, the Congress sought to couch the demand for making the evidence public as it will help to call Pakistan’s bluff. “Time was ripe to expose the malicious lies,” it said.

A BSF soldier patrols along a fence at the India-Pakistan border in RS Pura south-west of Jammu. — AFP

Ravi Dhaliwal & Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur/Jammu, October 4

Pakistani troops on Tuesday again resorted to mortar shelling and firing on Army posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Jammu and Rajouri districts, even as BSF sources said eight men spotted near the India-Pak border in Punjab’s Gurdaspur recently might have come scouting the area for a possible militant strike.Meanwhile, amid heightened vigil, BSF troops seized an empty Pakistani boat on the Ravi in the Pathankot sector on Tuesday.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Defence Spokesman Col Manish Mehta said, “Pakistan troops resorted to unprovoked firing in three areas of Noushera in Rajouri district from 0515 hours today.”They fired mortar bombs, automatic weapons and small arms, he said, adding that Indian troops gave a befitting reply.This was the sixth ceasefire violation in the past 36 hours when Pakistan troops have resorted to shelling and firing on Indian posts and civilian areas along the LoC.No casualties were reported in firing that began at Pallanwala at 1.35 pm on Tuesday. Mortars were being used by the Pakistan side and appropriate response was being given by the Indian Army.Yesterday, the Pakistani troops violated ceasefire four times and restored to heavy firing and mortar shelling in Saujian, Shahpur-Kerni, Mandi and KG sectors in Poonch district, injuring five civilians.UAVs seen close to border, says BSF The BSF said it has witnessed movement of UAVs very close to the Indo-Pak border in the recent past.”No doubt, the overall vigil has been increased (along western borders). All the defence and security forces establishments are on their highest alert. There is tension on the western border…we are having active engagement (with Pakistan) at the Line of Control and we are receiving shelling from the other side. However, we are in supportive role at the LoC (to army),” BSF Director General K K Sharma told reporters in Delhi.”We have noticed UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) coming 100 metre up to the border…maybe they (Pakistani forces) want to check our preparedness but I can assure you that we are fully capable of giving a befitting reply and we will not allow any nefarious design of terrorists to succeed,” he said.‘CCTV footage showed unarmed men close to fence’Meanwhile, two days after the border guards saw “suspicious movement” near the India-Pakistan border in Gurdaspur, BSF sources said eight unknown men spotted near the border may have been scouting for a possible militant strike.Senior BSF officers who were at Chakri on Tuesday claimed that images captured by CCTVs showed what clearly looked like people near the border, after the force reportedly cast doubts over what they had seen. A video showed the men, all unarmed, scattering when the guards began firing at them, sources said.  “Our Jalandhar-based analysts who checked the contents of the DVR have found some useful information. A group of unarmed men were loitering at a distance of 800 metre to 1 km from the barbed wire fencing… We can say with conviction that they were not smugglers. They had come to carry out a recce. An infiltration bid at a later date cannot be ruled out. We have tightened security near the border while the police have been asked to act as the second line of defence,” a BSF officer said, not wanting to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press.Until Monday night, the force was unsure if they had seen humans or a herd of cattle, sources said.However, coming as it did within hours of a militant strike at an Army camp in Baramulla, the development led to increased security in Punjab’s borders, particularly since the state has seen two terrorist strikes within six months of each other in the past year-and-a-half. Seventy personnel from the Punjab Armed Police have been deployed in area on the Punjab Police’s insistence.Although the BSF have not commented, police appeared to confirm that some people had been spotted near the area.“Now that we have concrete evidence that a group of men were sighted on the Pakistani side of the border we have increased surveillance in the area. All neighbouring villages are being searched. The operation will continue till tomorrow, when we will review it in the presence of senior officers. There are chances that the group may have acted as a camouflage to enable some men sneak in. We are ruling out nothing… we are leaving nothing to chance,” said Superintendent of Police Jasdeep Singh, who oversaw the deployment and remained at Dorangla for a large part of Tuesday.After an empty Pakistani boat was seized on the Ravi, a BSF officer said, “We have captured a Pakistani boat which had washed away to this side in the Ravi along the International Border (IB) in Pathankot sector.” a senior BSF officer said.The boat was probably washed away due to the rising water level in the Ravi in Pathankot sector, he said.The seizure comes two days after a Pakistani boat with nine crew members was apprehended off the Gujarat coast by the Indian Coast Guard on October 2. — With agencies

New Delhi, November 18The government today said it has enhanced the lump sum ex gratia being paid to families of military personnel.With effect from January 1 this year, next of kin in case of death in the course of duties attributable to actions of violence by terrorists etc has been increased to Rs 25 lakh in place of Rs 10 lakh earlier, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.In cases of death occurring during enemy action in war or border skirmishes or in action against militants, terrorists, the amount has been increased to Rs 35 lakh from the Rs 15 lakh at present.The Army Group Insurance Fund for Officers has been raised to Rs 75 lakh for officers with effect from October 1, 2016, from Rs 60 lakh while for JCOs/other ranks, the amount has been increased to Rs 37.5 lakh from Rs 30 lakh. — PTI

Sharif’s UN speech raising Kashmir was inflection point

From page 1 NEW DELHI: India will neither forgive nor forget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared less than a week after the Uri outrage. It wasn’t just rhetoric: Modi had already okayed a strike against Pakistani terrorist launchpads across the Line of Control (LoC).

AP FILEBorder Security Force soldiers patrol the India-Pakistan international border in Akhnoor sector.

The decision to punish Pakistan was conveyed to defence minister Manohar Parrikar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on September 23, and the build-up to D-day began the next day.

It was no rash decision. The diplomatic route was chosen before unsheathing the iron fist. Immediately after the September 18 attack on the Indian Army at Uri, Modi called Doval for information on the perpetrators and how they managed to get inside the brigade headquarters.

The Pakistan connection became evident from the GPS sets found on the four dead terrorists as well as from the interrogation of their two guides caught by Uri villagers.

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit was summoned on September 21 and given a protest letter detailing the involvement of a terror group based in his country. Pakistan chose denial as its response, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif raising Kashmir in his speech at the United Nations.

That was the inflection point, when the idea of a military response began to crystallise.

Late on September 22, Modi, Parrikar and Doval were briefed by Director General of Military Operations Lt General Ranbir Singh on LoC strike options as well as the posture of the Pakistan army. Army chief General Dalbir Singh was present at this briefing in the War Room of the ministry of defence. By this time, Pakistan had activated all its radars along the LoC and its forces were on high alert.

After examining the options put up by Doval in consultation with the three service chiefs, the surgical strike option was chosen by September 23.

Once the decision had been taken, Doval, Army chief Gen. Dalbir Singh and other operational planners discarded their mobile phones. All communications were direct or through highly secured lines only. Constant monitoring of the Pakistani political leadership and army brass, including the Rawalpindi-based X Corps in charge of PoK as well as the Gilgit-based commander of the Northern Areas, was carried out. As the strike plan was hammered out, Modi chaired some of the meetings.

The Army chief tasked his Northern Army Commander Lt Gen DS Hooda to segregate special forces troops from the 1, 4 and 9 parachute at his disposal, and prepare for action. The army build-up began on September 24. Meanwhile, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) programmed Indian satellites to monitor the target area using GPS coordinates and linkups as a result of which Delhi had real-time imagery of the strike through helmet-mounted cameras of Indian soldiers on D-day. Video footage of the entire action exists but has not been released to the public. Given that Pakistan had activated its radars across the LoC, insertion of special forces through helicopters was ruled out. Special forces squads with night-vision devices, Tavor 21 and AK-47 assault rifles, rocketpropelled grenades, shoulderfired missiles, Heckler and Koch pistols, high explosive grenades and plastic explosives crossed the LoC on foot. The teams were 30-strong each and had specific targets. While the corps commanders were getting their men ready, the planners in Delhi went below the radar. Starting September 26, Doval held three meetings with the three military chiefs, foreign secretary, two intelligence chiefs, NTRO chief and the DGMO. No uniforms were allowed at these meetings; unmarked cars were used to meet at discreet locations around Delhi to discuss the plan as well as possible Pakistani retaliation.

Operational planners had narrowed things down to eight contingencies. It comes as no surprise that evacuation of civilians living close to border in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab started at 10 pm on September 27, an hour before Indian soldiers went across.

D-day began with Special Forces squads slipping across the LoC towards designated targets. The plan was such that teams with distant targets left early on September 27 evening so that all strikes would be coordinated. The instructions were that all teams would engage the terrorists simultaneously so that none could rescue another. Using mortar and machine-gun fire from the Indian side to pin Pakistani troops down, the soldiers of the special forces crawled to their targets without meeting any resistance. Sentries at the launchpads were neutralised by snipers before the troops went in and finished the job. Barring one soldier who stepped on a landmine, all teams returned to their bases by 9am on September 28. The surprise had been complete and there had hardly been any retaliatory fire. Even as the operation was on, Doval received a call from his US counterpart Susan Rice. Although the US later said that Rice had offered India help against terrorism, the Modi government has kept this conversation top secret.

Throughout the operation, Modi, Parrikar, Doval, the service chiefs, DGMO, intelligence chiefs, NTRO chief, Northern Army Commander and his two corps commanders were awake and in touch. After the troopers returned, the operational planners, led by Doval, met Modi and briefed him.

Six launchpads had been razed to the ground with Indian troopers gunning down 45 terrorists at various locations. Uri had been avenged.

After the operation, Modi called a meet of the Cabinet Committee on security, and DGMO Ranbir Singh called his Pakistani counterpart to inform him about the strike. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was briefed by Modi after the CCS meet. Starting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Opposition leaders were briefed directly or at the all-party meeting held later the same day.

Game changer? Pak army has hailed CPEC as the “fruit” of Gen Sharif’s vision.

IN October 1994, Gen Naseerullah Babar, Pakistan’s influential interior minister in the Benazir Bhutto government, sought to open trade and transit routes to Central Asia by sending a convoy of the Pakistan army-owned national logistics cell trucks across chaotic Afghanistan into Turkmenistan. The convoy led by the ISI’s leading Afghanistan operative, Colonel ‘Imam’, was stopped by Mujahideen commanders before Kandahar but the fledgling Pakistan-promoted Taliban chased the commanders away and captured Kandahar. The Taliban, as Pakistan’s instrument, was on its way to control Afghanistan in the next few years but Pakistan’s historic aim of using its location to become a trade and transit route for Central Asia continues to remain a distant dream. Will the same fate befall the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which Pakistan is touting as a “game changer” for the country? Or will it evolve into an effective trade route via the Gwadar Port, on Pakistan’s Makran coast, to Xinjiang and northwest China? These questions are now pointedly relevant, for, on November 13, Gwadar was opened up, albeit for the present largely symbolically, for trade activities under the CPEC. PM Nawaz Sharif and army chief Raheel Sharif werepresent on the occasion; this, at a time, when tension between Nawaz and the army is running high. Significantly, the Pakistan army’s information wing hailed the CPEC as the “fruit” of General Sharif’s vision.The absence of the Chinese leadership at Gwadar though indicates that the occasion was designed to quell growing scepticism about the CPEC in sections of Pakistani opinion. This is also borne out by what Maj-Gen Muhammad Afzal, director-general of the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) of the Pakistan army — responsible for the construction of a large part of the CPEC’s road network  — told Pakistan’s leading newspaper, Dawn: “We pushed it to counter the despondency that was coming to surround the project. Too many people were airing views that this project is not viable or not going to materialise”.In typical army fashion, reminiscent of the Babar convoy, the FWO decided to organise one Chinese convoy and two from Pakistan to reach Gwadar to load cargo on two ships berthed there. The cargo largely from China was destined to the EU, the UAE, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Chinese convoy crossed into Pakistan via the Khunjerab Pass and travelled on the Karakoram highway and reached Gwadar, as did the Pakistan convoys originating in Lahore and Sialkot through Balochistan. Instead of the Punjab-Sindh alignment of the CPEC the route through Balochistan to Gwadar was deliberately chosen. This was to signal to the Baloch that their interests would not be neglected. It is also to indicate to China and other countries that the Pakistan army which has raised a special force for the CPEC and its projects was competent to ensure its security.Chinese President Xi Jinping formally announced the CPEC during his visit to Pakistan in April 2015. It will involve an investment of around $50 billion to develop the port, vastly upgrade a large part of the road system of Pakistan that would link the port to the Chinese border and add around 11,500 MW of power at a cost of $33 billion. The latter will be undertaken by private Chinese entities on a commercial basis. The CPEC also envisages upgradation of Pakistani railways with the ambitious aim of joining it with Chinese railways in Xinjiang. Gas pipelines are also contemplated along the Karakoram Highway into Xinjiang. There is little doubt that the Chinese and the Pakistani leaderships are committed to quickly pursue the different energy generation as well as the road linkage projects. Work has begun on many of them but political questions as well economic are being raised about the CPEC. The Baloch are particularly concerned that the CPEC will be one more instrument to exploit their resources and further change the province’s demographics to their disadvantage. Some voices are being raised about if the CPEC will ever develop the volume of traffic to become commercially viable. Cost projections of freight overland on the CPEC and from Gwadar are not as yet known. The terrain too in Gilgit-Baltistan is very difficult. Despite the scepticism the Chinese consider the CPEC  as of strategic value and will seriously develop its connectivity component, especially the Gwadar Port. They will take a long term view and not look for short or medium term commercial viability. It will thus transform the foundation of Sino-Pak ties which was hitherto based on shared hostility towards India. Now a positive element, independent of India, is being added to this relationship. This has major strategic consequences for India. Some tensions have grown in US-Pakistan ties as the latter has continued to refuse to rein in the Afghan Taliban. Consequently, Pakistan has leaned even closer to China. On its part China is deeply concerned at growing India-US ties across all sectors and is worried about the Indian role in the latter’s approach to “contain” it. This has pushed China to draw Pakistan still closer and to clearly signal its stakes in Pakistan’s stability and well being through the CPEC. China has also obliquely cautioned India against seeking to disrupt the CPEC. India has objected to it as it will go through Pakistan-occupied areas of J&K.How far will this forward approach infuse Chinese actions on developing Gwadar as a naval staging post? Certainly, Pakistan, which has never hesitated in offering its facilities to the US, will not be reluctant to allow China to use Gwadar in this manner. It will be prudent for Indian strategic planners to take this aspect in their calculations as they look to India’s role in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. A signal to China and Pakistan that respect for security of important interests is a two-way street will not be out of place. In the connectivity game the CPEC is an undoubted boost for Pakistan. However, it does not help in furthering its objective in gaining connectivity to Central Asia via Afghanistan. This is notwithstanding plans for Afghanistan getting connected to the CPEC in the future. President Ashraf Ghani has said as long as Pakistan continues to deny India and Afghanistan full mutual access he will not agree to Pakistan using Afghanistan to freely transit to Central Asia.Meanwhile, India needs to energetically work on the Chabahar Port for assured access to Afghanistan. There seems to be little progress in the past six months since Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the Iranian and the Afghan Presidents to witness the India-Iran agreement to develop Chabahar. India can only be tardy in implementing the deal at the cost of its national interest.The writer is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

Mean business: The strikes have signalled our readiness to violate the sanctity of LoC.

IT is quite bizarre. Pakistan’s brazen denial of India’s smart and sharp punitive raid by both the military and civilian leadership has put New Delhi in a quandary about any military riposte. The situation is confusing. GHQ Rawalpindi was extremely surprised by India’s punitive retaliation. While Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations maintains that the LoC has not been crossed and army chief Gen Raheel Sharif has called it malicious propaganda. Pakistan TV channels have added to the opacity by showing doctored footage of captured Indian soldiers. Some media reports say the attack was a ground trespass in which eight Indian and two Pakistani soldiers  were killed. Hafiz Saeed has said: “Let us teach Indians surgical strikes.” He wants the Pakistan army to liberate Kashmir. By denying that the LoC had been crossed, a response might be averted.On the face of it, the strategic message is that no escalation is being contemplated and it is business as usual. Domestically and internationally, Pakistan is in one big mess. While General Sharif’s popularity is soaring and his term is coming to an end in weeks, the battle for succession is waging in the minds of the army, the public and PM Nawaz Sharif. Despite the army clarifying that the General will retire by November-end, nobody is sure the transition will be bloodless. The economy is in bad shape, the campaign against terrorism is not going well and Mr Sharif’s standing is slumped. Pakistan has never been so isolated regionally and internationally as it is today. Presidential favourite Hillary Clinton’s latest pronouncement that she fears a jehadi coup in Pakistan and suicide nuclear bombers roaming the streets paints a scary nuclear scenario. Given these conditions, a Pakistan army adventure should not be surprising ‘at a time and place of its choosing’, though without significant escalation. Overt or covert tit-for-tat strikes should be expected in the form of spectacular fidayeen attacks on military camps or more measured strikes inside J&K.World attention was grabbed by India’s retributive, preemptive raid described as a calibrated counter terrorism operation. It was not condemned by even some of Pakistan’s best friends like China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain. Cleverly choreographed and kept below the escalatory threshold, it sent the right message to Pakistan that henceforth its cross-border terrorism (CBT) will not go un-responded. It is the domestic audience which has been overwhelmed by the punitive retaliation. Dileep Chand, the taxi driver who brought me back after one of the many angry and emotional TV studio indictments of Uri, asked me whether India would retaliate. Before I could answer, he shot back: “Our leaders indulge in empty threats.” He was old enough to have lived through the cyclic ignominy of the attacks on Parliament and Mumbai and the numerous Pathankots and Uris over the last three decades. Dileep Chand is a happy man now.The cross-border operation was symbolic to signal our readiness to violate the sanctity of LoC, something we didn’t do even during Kargil — to make the Deep State rethink its strategy of employing non-state actors as instruments of coercion. As more Uris will happen, our capacity to deal with them has to expand. Former NSA MK Narayanan has revealed that our retributive capabilities are inadequate and that the options of striking terrorist training camps in the PoK were considered unviable after Mumbai in 2008 following a cost-benefit analysis. He said at that time India lacked the capability of conducting spectacular raids, rescue missions and extractions like Entebbe, Mogadishu and Abbottabad, adding that “the reality is that India’s security agencies and the armed forces still do not have adequate capabilities of this kind notwithstanding claims to the contrary”.Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has admitted that mistakes have been made in Pathankot and Uri. He has also talked about using a terrorist to fight a terrorist and putting back in place the dismantled deep assets in Pakistan. Similarly, NSA Ajit Doval has warned Pakistan “if there is another Mumbai there will be no Balochistan”. These capabilities should be constructed.India has not invested in transparent and clandestine punitive capabilities despite it being bled for the last 30 years, if not 70, by Pakistan’s CBT. According to the latest Pew Research Centre poll,  62 per cent of Indians want military force to be used to defeat terrorism; 63 per cent want India to spend more on defence. An online poll post-Uri suggests that 67 per cent Indians want the application of kinetic force. According to Credit Suisse, India has the fourth-largest militaries in the world and unarguably one of the most competent and yet it has not been employed effectively. That said, it is clear that certain necessary and urgently needed capabilities have not been developed. Who is to blame? The military, of course, but even more, successive governments that have starved it of funds and requisite political direction. The announcement last week by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the defence budget will be increased has not come a day too soon.PM Modi should devote more time and resources on the defence of the realm. Without sanitising the periphery and the homeland, his goal of building a prosperous and secure India cannot be realised. There was no reason for him to meet his Service Chiefs individually and collectively four times before going to Kozhikode, had he visited the War Room ab initio more frequently. In fact, on assuming office, he should have asked the military chiefs, two questions: readiness to respond to the next Mumbai type attack; and dealing with CBT. He should also have attended a war game or two to imbibe the nuances of a nuclear overhang. Had he done all this, contingency plans and rehearsals of a fitting reply commensurate with existing capabilities would have been ready for immediate use and not 10 days later.The retributive strike is not going to end CBT. The battle to alter the behaviour of the Deep State has been joined. For now, the Pakistan media is toeing its army’s line that the Indian Army did not cross the LoC. This make-believe allows Pakistan to not respond and escalate the situation. We should not try to rub GHQ Rawalpindi’s nose to the ground but leave it with the face-saving exit option. At the same time, we should be prepared for  retaliation, mainly in J&K. The military should keep its powder dry and let active diplomacy take the front seat, though India’s dilemma will remain crafting retribution over the next Uri.The writer is a founder member of the erstwhile Defence Planning Staff

Air Commodore Nitin Sathe, Chairman of Air Force Selection Board, Dehradun, delivers a lecture on disaster mangement at Uniosn World School in Dehradun on Tuesday.

Tribune News service

Dehradun, November 16

Air Commodore Nitin Sathe conducted a session on disaster management for students of class X to XII of Unison World School on Tuesday evening.His session revolved around one of his two published books and an enthralling incident of his life— disaster management after Tsunami 2004— that he experienced at Bande Aceh, near Andaman and Nicobar Islands.Sathe described the initial signs, destruction and aftermath of the Tsunami that struck the coasts of Indonesia on December 24, 2004. Apart from this, he informed the students about the actions that were taken to revive life on the island and the resurrections over two years. Small and impressive lessons were propagated all throughout his speech, leaving a few eyes welled up with tears and a few minds thoughtful about the unfortunates in life. Towards the end of his lecture, Sathe spoke about ‘Predict, Prevent and Prepare-the three Ps of Disaster management’.Air Commodore Sathe is an alumnus of the National Defense Academy, Khadakwasla, and is at present the president of the Air Force Selection Board, Dehradun.

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 1

Former Deputy Director, Sainik Welfare, Lieut-Col Manmohan Singh (retd) is a busy man these days as several people from across the region have been calling on him to congratulate him on the feat of his adopted son Lieut-Gen Ranbir Singh, DGMO, Indian Army, who strategised the surgical strikes across the LOC two days ago.At his residence in Urban Estate here, the Lieut-Col said, “Since we did not have any child, I legally adopted my brother’s son Ranbir, whom we fondly call Babbu, at the age of three and a half years. My brother, who retired as a JCO, was residing at Ambala Jattan village near Garhdiwal in Hoshiarpur. Since there was no good education facility there, we brought him here and sent him to St Joseph’s Convent School, Lajpat Nagar, right from LKG.”Taking out old pictures, he recalls, “Ranbir was very intelligent but a bit lazy. I had to push him out of the bed early and he maintains the habit. At the Class V level, I made him study rigorously and prepare for admission to Sainik School Kapurthala. There he worked hard and got through in the National Defence Academy (NDA). He went to Khadakwasla, then the IMA in Dehradun and got commissioned in the Army in December 1980. He has been the only infantry general to have commanded an armoured division after Gen Sundarji.”He proudly tells, “Till date, he maintains all habits that I passed onto him. He is regular with early morning walks. I am a teetotaller and he too is. He is an avid book reader till date.”Says Lieut-Col Manmohan Singh, “He got married to a Marathi girl. They have a son, who is studying in the Delhi College of Engineering. My brother (Lieut-Gen Ranbir’s biological father) passed away at 50, while his wife and two daughters are in Vancouver for the past 20-25 years.”He further said, “Ranbir keeps coming here every four months or so. But this time, he won’t come till the tension defuses. Having been promoted as Lieut-Gen six-seven months ago, he was tipped to be the Corps Commander and get posted here. The incumbent here Lieut-Gen BS Sehrawat and Ranbir have been batchmates. In any case, he will have to serve as a Corps Commander for a year to be eligible as the Chief of Army. He has been accompanying Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on his foreign tours. He has shown his capabilities and is among the front-runners now.”Lieut-Col Manmohan, who has been training youth for entry to Defence, paramilitary forces and police for the past over two decades, said he had been in Delhi with Lieut-Gen Ranbir a week ago and he remained very busy. “He comes home late even now. He calls me up daily after returning from work. He called me even on the day when they conducted the strike.”

NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan are possibly headed for another showdown on water after New Delhi said on Thursday it wouldn’t be party to a court of arbitration process on Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects, a demand by Islamabad that has been accepted by the World Bank.

The World Bank had brokered the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in 1960 and has a specific role in the resolution of differences. Kishanganga is a tributary of river Jhelum and the 330 MW project is coming up in Bandipora in J&K. The 850 MW Ratle project is on the Chenab in Doda district.

In a communication to the World Bank on Thursday, India said the stand taken by it to start two parallel process simultaneously—initiating the court of arbitration (COA) process as demanded by Pakistan and setting up neutral expert as demanded by India—was not “legally tenable” under IWT. “Our stand is very clear. We have asked World Bank to stop the process. What happens if the COA and neutral expert give contradictory judgment? Under the IWT, the judgment of the neutral expert can’t be revoked by the COA,” said a senior government official.

However, not heeding to India’s request, World Bank on Friday held a draw of lots in its headquarters in Washington to determine who will appoint three umpires to sit on the COA. The COA has seven members, two arbitrators each to be appointed by India and Pakistan, and three ‘umpires’ nominated by certain global dignitaries. If parties can’t agree on who will nominate the ‘umpires’, a draw of lots decides which three of the global dignitaries will nominate one ‘umpire’ each.

But the World Bank asked both countries to “agree to mediation” to resolve issues regarding the two projects. “What is clear, though, is that pursuing two concurrent processes under the treaty could make it unworkable over time and we therefore urge both parties to agree to mediation that the World Bank Group can help arrange. The two countries can also agree to suspend the two processes during the mediation process or at any time until the processes are concluded,” senior vice-president and World Bank group general counsel, Anne-Marie Leroy, told PTI.

On Thursday, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said the government will examine options. India’s grouse is that the World Bank hasn’t followed the procedures in the treaty. India says Pakistan’s objections are technical and the bilateral Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) can address them. If PIC can’t resolve the matter, it is termed ‘difference’ and is addressed by neutral experts appointed on request by either party to World Bank.