Islamabad, July 22

Pakistan’s top court on Sunday said it had begun reviewing statements made by a judge alleging the country’s spy agencies were influencing judicial proceedings, as the powerful military called for an investigation.Pakistan’s July 25 General Election has been hit by accusations of pre-poll rigging with ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) accusing the military of influencing the judiciary to deny it a second term.Islamabad High Court judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui accused the country’s premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of interfering in legal cases.“The ISI is fully involved in trying to manipulate the judicial proceedings,” Siddiqui said in a speech to lawyers, adding the agency had told the court not to release Sharif and his daughter Maryam until after the elections.“In order to safeguard the sanctity and credibility of the state institutions, the Supreme Court has been requested to initiate appropriate process to ascertain the veracity of the allegations and take actions accordingly,” the army said. Disqualification of candidates is one of the challenges the former ruling PML-N has faced ahead of the elections. — ReutersCandidate Radesh Singh Tony, the braveRadesh Singh Tony (centre) is the first independent candidate from Pakistan’s Sikh minority to run in conservative, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The odds are already heavily stacked against Tony in a constituency populated with around 130,000 mostly Muslim registered voters, compared to just 160 Sikhs.His two opponents come from parties backed by hardline religious organisations with links to militant groups. The contest comes just months after local community leader Charanjeet Singh was shot dead. If elected, Tony has vowed to serve all communities, but is still wary of simmering threats. “We are vulnerable targets,” Tony says. “We are campaigning in an atmosphere of fear.” AFP

Pak military denies interference

Army, Navy & Air Force have to climb out of their respective silos, cease empire building, and create a joint plan to address military angst

Military officers have asked for parity with IAS and IPS officers, complaining time and again that they don’t climb ranks fast enough. The anger at the civil services, however, doesn’t justify the solutions the armed forces seem to be identifying for their ailments.

The latest attempt to find a solution has resulted in a proposal to do away with the rank of the Army brigadier. A study was commissioned by chief Bipin Rawat last month to help with the cadre restructuring. It also sought to address the three main issues plaguing the armed forces for more than 30 years: degradation of ranks, lower pay scales, and warrant of precedence.

The angst due to these issues has been most apparent ever since the deployment of the armed forces, especially the Army, increased exponentially. In military law, this is called ‘aid to civil authority’ or the deployment of armed forces for the aid of the government and the community. This ‘aid’ has become well-nigh permanent in India, as have ranks, precedence, and pay scales.

The Army seems to be copying the Joneses by proposing to prune the number of ranks so as to bring a semblance of equality with the civil services. Not a good starting point at all. Especially since the Indian military is an age-old institution which has barely been tinkered with in terms of structure, deployment and functioning.

It remains largely the expeditionary force it was created as in the pre-World War I era. Therefore, even today, the armed forces remain expeditionary in structure, command, and control. But the Indian state, which governs the military, is now largely insular, and that is where the civil-military complications become acuter.

In the largely internal deployment of the armed forces, motivated and bright officers meet their civilian counterparts who head districts, as collectors or as police chiefs. The comparison begins there: A young captain, who wears the rank of a second-in-command in the Army, and the superintendent of police, who is a three-star officer, after the same number of years in service.

As both IAS and IPS officers go up in the ranks of service, the gap in seniority gets wider and at a faster pace.

This resentment gives rise to the anger and frustration in the armed forces. More fire-fighting attempts are made to gain parity and rejoin the race. But each attempt completely misses the crucial point– there need not be a race at all.

By no stretch of imagination can the armed forces be equated with the UPSC-selected civil or police service. Their roles are completely different, and those who have joined the various services have done so voluntarily, knowing what the qualifications needed are.

When the basic requirement of soldiering are at complete variance with civil administration, why should the armed forces be seeking parity in the first place? And if they are seeking parity, it means that there has been a degradation for which the society and the leadership of the armed forces are responsible.

These dilutions and diminishing of ranks haven’t happened overnight, but are the result of political oversight, civilian manipulation, and a lot of military ignorance in governance. The solution then cannot come from within the military alone but also has to come from the government.

Cadre reviews of the past ultimately became sops for a few ranks, looked good for some years, and then horrendously unwieldy as time went by. The current cadre review and the tentative proposals in it appear to be headed in the same direction. In lay terms, it is simply denting work, rather than anything substantive.

For anything substantial to happen, the armed forces will first have to set up a joint committee to oversee any cadre review. Only the Navy, Air Force, or the Army doing it alone, as in this case, simply perpetuates the problem. After all, the three services have to work closer together than with any other government bodies. Which means they need to be on the same page and seniority in order to arrive at a solution. The Army jettisoning one rank complicates the problem further since their equivalent ranks will continue to exist in the Navy and Air Force, with military protocol and precedence under greater stress.

The three services should climb out of their respective silos, cease empire building, and formulate a joint plan. Since silos and empires are not easy to destroy, the three services can first prepare for a separate armed forces pay commission. The success of which will pave the way for greater cooperation, integration and hopefully, modernisation of the military structure.

Precedence and parity will be a hole-in-one after that.

Manvendra Singh is editor-in-chief of Defence & Security Alert. He is presently a BJP MLA in the Rajasthan assembly and former member of the Parliament Standing Committee on Defence.

The IAF in Delhi has invited applications for the post of Lower Division Clerk. Candidates who are interested to apply for the post and send their fill up applications to Air Officer Commanding, Air Force Central Medical Establishment, New Delhi on or before July 30, 2018.

IAF Delhi Recruitment 2018: Online applications for the post of Lower Division Clerk has been invited by the Indian Air force at Air Central Medical Establishment, New Delhi. Candidates who are interested to apply can submit their filled up applications before the last date scheduled on July  30, 2018.

The IAF had released The of Delhi Clerk recruitment notification on June 1, 2018 through Employment News. candidates who have passed the HS final year examination can are eligible to apply for the post. Those who are in between the age of 18 to 25 years will be considered for the post.

ALSO READ: DSSSB Recruitment 2018: Applications invited for various posts, last date August 13, 2018

Candidates need to submit their application in the prescribed format the IAF and Air Officer Commanding, Air Force Central Medical Establishment, Subroto Park, New Delhi, PIN – 110010 by July 30, 2018. To go to the official website and check the notification online, click here: http://indianairforce.nic.in/

ALSO READ: TS Police Recruitment 2018: Exam dates for Constable and Sub Inspector recruitment released @ tslprb.in

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Lt-Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (retd)IT is not the first time that a lone Kashmiri policeman or soldier has been abducted and killed. Javed Ahmad Dar is the umpteenth policeman who while off duty has been isolated and targeted, once again in notorious Shopian. A number of Army soldiers have similarly been targeted when off duty, on leave and outside the organised support of their units; the recent case of rifleman Aurangzeb is too well known to reiterate. This includes Lt Umar Farooq of 2 Raj Rif who was killed in Kulgam last year, first among the officer cadre. All over India the public is understandably frustrated at the loss of these Kashmiri bravehearts with whose plight there is tremendous empathy. To comprehend the limitations in securing the men in uniform and whether anything is deficient in our ways it is important to get a measure of the working environment of security personnel in Kashmir. There are domains to examine — first the functional on-duty aspect and second the off duty challenges, or on leave. The Army functions as units. Thus if a Jammu & Kashmir Light Infantry (JAK LI) unit consisting 50 per cent Kashmiri Muslims is deployed on either the LoC or the hinterland, the functioning is all in sub-units of at least seven men (reduced section strength); they could be deployed as just a buddy pair of two men but under constant watch and control of another superior. The hallmark of normal functioning in the Army is that no deployment can ever be in less than a buddy pair. The system of buddies ensures that even if one is resting the other is alert. Mutual support is a basic principle on which most training and execution depends. Terrorist abduction of a soldier on duty is next to impossible, although there has been one stray case in an operation near Sopore. Vulnerability to ambushes is high in the case of small parties as quick reaction teams protect officers, logistics elements or simply isolated moves such as the ambush of the Rashtriya Rifles group in 2013 near Hyderpura on the national highway, in which we lost eight bravehearts. The element of vulnerability is the highest among the Army’s Territorial Army (Home and Hearth) units in which the composition of personnel is largely local and the units stay within the Valley. The frequency of home visits by personnel is higher, making them much more vulnerable.The Army’s role and system of functioning obviously differs from the J & K Police (JKP), where the personnel are fully secure as they are deployed as armed police units. The Special Operations Group (SOG) also work in small teams but not so small as to be isolated and targeted. For the conduct of operations beyond intelligence gathering they work in close concert with Army units which give them inherent security. The vulnerability is the highest of the Station House Officers (SHOs) and their staff at police stations which is not so numerous as to afford the required overkill for ensured security. SHO Feroz Dar of Anantnag was killed a year ago in an ambush along with six of his men. The thing to remember about vulnerability of policemen is that armed police units live mostly in police lines but personnel manning police stations often live among the people and many times in their own homes. Under normal circumstances that is the best way of policing with local policemen in the know of everything in and around their abodes. However, with terror threats that makes these policemen most vulnerable.All personnel on leave have to visit their homes. In earlier periods of higher terrorist presence even notorious tehsils such as Tral had an unwritten code and security men on leave were usually not targeted even if alone or in their homes. It is with lower terrorist strength that abduction, torture, uploading of videos and eventual killing has become a norm. These personnel are the softest targets, mostly unarmed and their killing has a high impact on social media and national media. Foreign terror groups looking for reporting back to proxy masters count these as achievements. What is surprising is local groups resorting to this as it draws the ire of the public. It appears to indicate the absence of mature leadership directing the local terror operations. This is the sentiment on which the JKP has not sufficiently focused in terms of psychological exploitation painting the local terrorists as villains among their own people. Naming and shaming them in the local environment places the pressure of ethics on local terrorists (LTs), the lack of which robs a local family off its bread earner. How else can personnel travelling on leave and inevitably going home alone be better secured? The Army has an SOP of personnel reporting to the nearest posts but this affords only token security. There have been proposals to allow local security personnel to carry their service weapons while on leave. For many reasons, including that of potential desertion and snatching, this is not a doable idea. Providing additional manpower for personal security to all is out of the question, resource wise. Buddy pair system for policemen is possible up to a point and definitely not on leave. The far better way perhaps is to rouse the conscience of the people but the establishment has generally been weak at this, its so-called outreach has been undefined and unimaginative; social media can be better harnessed through professional advice. A suggestion of collective social and economic retribution against villages which cannot protect their own policemen or soldiers is never a good idea as it has many negative spin-offs. The enthusiastic response to recruitment opportunities for entry into the various security-related organisations is equally balanced by the huge turnout at funerals of terrorists. This is the paradox of Kashmir which needs greater ground-based research by some advanced research institutions because top of the head deductions will not assist in curbing the threat to those who do service for the nation. As a starter, the identity of known perpetrators of such criminal acts must be projected all over the general area from where the LTs hail. If funerals of LTs can give rise to passions among the youth to join the LT ranks, surely the sentiments on the targeted killing of local isolated security personnel can also be similarly exploited. Former GOC of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 1

An Army man posted in Jammu and Kashmir has been running from pillar to post for over a month to get his passport renewed from the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in Jalandhar. He was shocked to find out that his passport had already been renewed and issued to another man in 2010 by the RPO in Amritsar.Ravinder Singh, who hails from Kastiwal village in Batala, told The Tribune that his passport had expired in 2013. He said he could not get it renewed due to professional commitments.He said, “I had lost my high school certificate in 2008 and got a duplicate one issued in May 2010. When I approached the Jalandhar RPO office last month, I was told that my passport had already been renewed and issued to some other person in May 2010 itself.”He said while the renewed passport bore his name, date of birth and names of his parents, the address and the photograph on the passport were different. He said the RPO authorities had asked him to provide the fee receipt that he got while getting the copy of his high school certificate from the Punjab School Education Board.“How can I produce a fee receipt that I got eight years ago?” questioned Ravinder.He added that he even went to the Batala police to lodge an FIR but they refused to do so and instead asked him to approach the RPO office in Amritsar again.Amritsar RPO Raj Kumar Bali said as there was no online passport “sewa” in 2008, someone might have managed to get a passport renewed on his name.“Earlier, it was a common practice to target Army men for making forged passports. Agents in connivance with local police used to get forged passports made by clearing their police verification,” said Bali.He said as the authorities used to paste photographs manually over the passport, there might be a possibility that someone might have taken out Ravinder’s photograph and pasted his own.He said Ravinder might now have to wait for months to get his passport renewed as he would have to wait for the final report of the inquiry that would soon be initiated by his office. Feeling harassed and dejected, Ravinder returned to J&K on Sunday.

Prince Zaid was briefed by Pakistan’s Special Envoy on Kashmir Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari in March and the UN High Commission for Human Rights report has the Pak print all over it.