Current Events :
Aankhon Mè Aansoo Léké Honthon Sé Muskrayé Hum Jaisé Jee Rahein Hain Koi Jeekè To Dikhayê
Lt Gen Harpal Singh is a retired Indian Army officer who has been appointed as an advisor to the Telangana government’s irrigation department. With over 40 years of experience in the military, he specializes in strategic infrastructure development, particularly in creating tunnels and underground assets for defense forces.
Some of his notable achievements include ¹ ²:
As advisor to the Telangana government, Lt Gen Singh will leverage his expertise to accelerate work on irrigation tunnels and other infrastructure projects, including the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project ³.
Chandigarh: The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has ruled that once a soldier is discharged from service, the provisions of the Army Act and Army Rules no longer apply to them. The tribunal made this observation while hearing a case related to family pension, where the second marriage of a Muslim ex-serviceman was being treated as a ‘plural marriage’ under military law.The judgment came in a case involving a retired Muslim soldier who, after his retirement, married a second time. Following his death, his second wife applied for a family pension — despite the Army’s records listing only his first wife. The authorities declined her claim on the grounds that her name was absent from the military’s official documents.Regarding the absence of the second wife’s name in the military record, the AFT relied on the late employee’s bank account, where the second wife was listed as a co-applicant. This established that the applicant was indeed the second wife of the deceased.The Lucknow bench, comprising Justice Suresh Kumar Gupta (judicial member) and Major General Sanjay Singh (administrative member), passed the order while allowing an application filed by Shaheen Bano, widow of the late Sepoy Mohd Juber of the Army Service Corps (ASC).In this case, Mohd Juber was enrolled in the ASC on May 16, 1963, and discharged on Jan 1, 1978.
Permanent Residency in the USLCR Capital PartnersDuring his service, he was married to Kishmitul Nisha. The two later divorced as per Muslim customs. Juber then married the applicant, Shaheen Bano, on June 25, 1983, also in accordance with Muslim customs.According to the applicant, her husband could not endorse her name in the service records since their marriage took place five years after his retirement. Kishmitul Nisha, the first wife, passed away on August 7, 2010.Juber died on May 7, 2021, at the age of 76. After his death, Shaheen Bano applied for a family pension but was informed that her name was not endorsed in the service records. Aggrieved, she approached the AFT seeking directions for the grant of pension.Opposing the plea, the Centre argued that since her name was not in the service records, her claim could not be processed. It also contended that her marriage to Juber took place during the subsistence of his first marriage, and therefore constituted a plural marriage under military law.After hearing all parties, the AFT noted that the Army had itself acknowledged the second marriage in its counter affidavit and had asked the applicant to submit documents for processing her pension claim. The tribunal held that there was no evidence to suggest that the applicant was not the legally wedded wife of the late employee.The tribunal directed the Centre to grant family pension to the applicant from the date of her husband’s death — May 7, 2021 — and to pay arrears within three months.QUOTE BOX”After discharge from service, the Army Act, Army Rules, and rules framed thereunder, etc, are not applicable to a retired soldier, and as such, the second marriage being solemnised by the late employee would not come under plural marriage. Otherwise also, in Muslim religious law, there is no embargo on a man having two wives at the same time.”— Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT)
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by Nilesh Kunwar
Distasteful Boast
In his satirical anti-war best seller Catch 22, Joseph Heller underscores the absurdity of war and army life by weaving an insanely hilarious plot set in the dying days of World War II. One of the events in this novel is about the group commander of a US Air Force base who’s at his wits end trying to retrieve a discomforting situation. After debating various options with his subordinates, he agrees with the suggestion “to act boastfully about something that we ought to be ashamed of,” since, “That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”
One doesn’t know whether Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir has read Catch 22. But isn’t comparing India to a Ferrari and Pakistan a dump truck filled with gravel an undisguised attempt by him to act boastfully about something one ought to be actually ashamed of?
Munir’s Morbid Message
The aim of this (to use Munir’s own words) “coarse analogy” however was not to compare the progress and development made by India vis-à-vis Pakistan, but only to highlight the consequences of vehicle collision dynamics when the Pakistani gravel laden dumper truck hits the ‘Indian Ferrari’. Being an uncouth remark with a discernibly aggressive undertone would definitely mortify every self-respecting Pakistani national.
However, Field Marshal Munir’s message wasn’t meant for discerning Pakistanis but those who have been made to believe that a “Hindu” is an existential enemy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And coming on the heels of his provocative “we are different from Hindus in every way” remark endorses this assessment.
While such a confrontational outlook may temporarily divert public attention from Rawalpindi’s other humongous failures on the military front, stoking religious sentiments is a double edged weapon that does more harm than good-a fact that the Pakistan army knows very well.
The Dumper Truck Makers
The question that the Pakistan army chief’s remark raises is-who has reduced Pakistan to a “dumper truck” filled with gravel? Having ruled the country right since its creation-either directly or from behind the scenes, the Pakistan army cannot shirk responsibility for the sorry state of affairs afflicting the country. Didn’t Pakistan’s ex President and former army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf proudly proclaim that “Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it”?
It was Gen (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan’s harebrained plan (codenamed “Operation Gibraltar”) to annex J&K by inciting a local insurrection led by army regulars disguised as razakars (civilian volunteers) that resulted in the 1965 Indo-Pak war of war with India and drained Pakistan’s exchequer. Just six years later, the then army chief Gen Yahya Khan authorised the Pakistan army to commit inhuman atrocities against the civilian population of what was then called East Pakistan that led to the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and saw Pakistan lose its Eastern wing. Thanks to Rawalpindi’s cavalier ways and utter disregard towards democratic norms, Pakistan was (literally) cut down to size!
In the late seventies, Gen Zia ul Haq played a significant role in advancing Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and ended up further widening the existing sectarianism chasm. He also entered into a Faustian deal with Washington, allowing the CIA to use Pakistani soil for setting up facilities for religious radicalisation and military training of locals as well as foreigners to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. While Rawalpindi’s assistance helped Pakistan to get a lavish US aid package and plenty of funds, religious radicalisation also ignited fundamentalism amongst Pakistanis and spawned home-grown terrorism that still endures.
While the Pakistan army boasts to no end about its professional excellence, none of the Pakistan army chiefs ever took the adverse effects of nurturing Islamist terrorism seriously. Instead they promoted the perverse ‘strategic asset’ doctrine of using terrorist groups to wage proxy war against its neighbours. No one cared to take decisive action against anti-Pakistan terrorist groups. Au contraire, making peace accords with terrorist groups by extending unimaginable concessions like permission to retain weapons, making monetary reimbursements and unconditionally releasing apprehended terrorists became a routine feature.
These shocking compromises to ‘buy’ peace were encouraged by the Pakistan army’s top brass to obviate any major terrorism related incident and allowed terrorist groups to recuperate and enhance their fighting capabilities, and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist group is a case in point. Despite this terrorist group being responsible for the 2014 Army Public School Peshawar massacre in which nearly 150 innocent students and staff members were killed and many more injured, the Pakistan army not only accepted a ceasefire offered by TTP in 2021 but even released more than a 100 of its jailed fighters, including commanders responsible for killing several members of the armed forces, law enforcement agencies and civilians.
A brief recap of Pakistan army’s stellar contribution towards nation building is depressing- two unsuccessful military attempts to annex J&K (in 1947 and 1965), the 1999 Kargil War fiasco during which the Pakistan army disowned and left behind corpses of its own rank and file killed in combat; making at least four documented peace deals (the 2004 Shakai agreement, Sararogha Agreement of 2005, Miranshah Accord of 2006 and the 2009Swat Agreement) as well as several un-publicised covert accords with the Hafiz Gul Bahadur terrorist group and Faqir Muhammad’s Taliban faction.
Accordingly, if Pakistan is today a gravel laden dump truck, then in all fairness doesn’t the entire credit for this disgraceful accomplishment entirely go to the Pakistan army?
Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a keen ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and after retirement is pursuing his favourite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think-tanks. Views expressed above are the author’s own
The flavour of the season is citizenship, something we thought had been decided 75 years ago by a liberal Constitution
So you think the issues uppermost in the minds of those who rule would be the landslides in the Himalayas or Trump’s tariffs, or our global isolation? Well, you would be wrong, but you can be forgiven for thinking so, for that is how a rational, logic-driven nation should think. But we have lost that status for a decade now and have become a Blunderland of nonsense. We are now firmly in the position of Lewis Carroll’s Alice:
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
You probably don’t, so let me explain. The flavour of the season is none of the issues mentioned above: it is citizenship, something we thought had been decided 75 years ago by a liberal Constitution which allowed citizenship on grounds of birth (jus soli), descent (jus sanguinis), naturalisation and registration. But, as Ambedkar said, any Constitution is only as good as those who are charged with implementing it — and that is why we are a Blunderland.
For, the Constitution, though unamended in this respect, is being spray-painted in many parts of the country to ensure that certain sections of our vast population are denied citizenship. An attempt to do so through legislation some years back (the Citizenship Amendment Act) hangs in limbo, or the deep freeze which is the Registry of the Supreme Court. So now it is being done through a game of smoke and mirrors — a Bangladeshi here, a Rohingya there, an encroacher here, a Bengali-speaking person there. But the message is loud and clear — we are the new India, we no longer brush a problem under the carpet, we now push it into Bangladesh in the dead of night, or into a detention centre under the gavel of a Foreigners’ Tribunal.
But there’s a problem: the Constitution has been shoved into the background, and a new set of (con)founding fathers have replaced it with their version of what constitutes citizenship. The ball was set rolling in 2019 through the CAA, implicitly propounding the theory that only a Hindu was entitled to citizenship of India. This doctrine has come in handy in Assam to include the few lakh Hindus excluded from the NRC there.
The RSS, not one to be left behind in the Hindutva sweepstakes, proclaimed that Hindustan was for Hindus alone, that an Indian citizen should possess both “Bharatiyata” and Bharati “swabhav” (no prizes for guessing who would define these terms!). The BJP’s eminence grise, Ram Madhav, went a step further and demanded that India should have not a democracy, but a “dharmocracy”. That would in effect transform us into a twin of a country like Iran, presumably with a different religion at the helm, of course. Believers of other religions could lump it, as second class citizens. In short, Indianness would be defined by faith and belief, notwithstanding the Constitution.
Enter the Deletion Commission of India (formerly the Election Commission of India), which finds conducting elections a boring job and so has now decided to identify citizens instead, something it is neither qualified nor mandated to do. Not knowing which document to rely on for proving citizenship, it has prescribed an a la carte menu of 11 documents to choose from.
It is another matter that 90 per cent of Indians do not possess these certificates. Many experts estimate that this could result in the disenfranchisement of as many as 20 per cent of voters in Bihar. This shortfall will, presumably, be made up by importing voters from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, as a recent report by the Reporters Collective seems to indicate.
As if these versions of citizenship were not enough, the Supreme Court, too, has entered the fray by prescribing a test for a “true citizen” or “Indian” — not questioning the government on any matter relating to defence. This novel definition has been provided in a defamation case against Rahul Gandhi. The Bombay High Court has also pitched in by ruling that Aadhaar and Epic (electoral photo identity card) do not prove citizenship. It has also added that any protest relating to matters of any other country — such as the genocide in Gaza by Israel — does not behove any patriotic Indian citizen, who should be protesting on domestic shortcomings such as piling up of garbage, etc. In other words, any dissent disqualifies one from claiming citizenship.
So here’s what all this pontificating boils down to: although there appears to be no dearth of definitions as to what constitutes citizenship, there is no official single document which can prove one’s citizenship! [The government conceded as much recently in Parliament when, in response to a question as to which document establishes citizenship, the MoS (Home) evaded any answer on this specific point]. We now need a bouquet of documents, with the lotus being the centrepiece of this flowery arrangement.
And so, while you and I shuttle between the RSS, judiciary, Election Commission and Ram Madhav, it is no wonder that more than 18 lakh Indians have decided that they have had enough and have surrendered their notional citizenship and migrated to other countries in the last 13 years.
They have obviously decided that a PIO card in hand is worth two citizenships in the bush. And more will continue to depart our eroding shores, unless the new “Demography Mission” isolates that particular Indian DNA which defines Bharatiyata once and for all.
Meanwhile, don’t give up on your dreams: keep sleeping, for did the Bard not insist that “sleep knits the ravelled sleeve of care”?
— The writer is a former IAS officer
Amid a raging tariff war, the Department of Posts has decided to temporarily suspend booking of all types of postal articles destined for the US with effect from August 25.
However, services will continue for letters, documents and gift items worth up to $100. The exempt categories would continue to be accepted and despatched to the US subject to further clarifications, the Ministry of Communication said in an order.
Customers whose had already booked articles but these couldn’t be dispatched to the US due to prevailing circumstances may seek a refund of postage, the ministry said.
The decision by the Department of Posts has been taken following an executive order issued by the US administration on July 30 under which duty-free exemption for goods valued up to $800 was withdrawn with effect from August 29.
All international postal items destined for the US, regardless of their value, shall be subject to customs duties as per the country-specific International Emergency Economic Power Act (IEEPA) tariff framework, the ministry said.
As per the US decision, transport carriers delivering shipments through the international postal network, or other ‘qualified parties’ approved by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), were required to collect and remit duties on postal shipments.
While the CBP issued certain guidelines on August 15, several critical processes relating to the designation of “qualified parties” and mechanisms for duty collection and remittance remain undefined. Consequently, US-bound air carriers have expressed their inability to accept postal consignments after August 25, citing lack of operational and technical readiness.
“In view of the above, the Department of Posts has decided to temporarily suspend booking of all types of postal articles, destined for the US with effect from August 25 except letters, documents and gift items up to $100 in value. These exempt categories will continue to be accepted and conveyed to the USA, subject to further clarifications from CBP and USPS,” the order said.
The department was closely monitoring the evolving situation in coordination with all stakeholders and every effort was being made to normalise services at the earliest possible opportunity, it added
Economic think tank GTRI founder Ajay Srivastava said under the new regime rolled out by the US, all inbound parcels will attract tariffs, but international postal shipments remain duty-free until the CBP establishes a new entry process and publishes it. After the implementation of new norms, shipments will face one of two duty structures–ad valorem duty based on the effective tariff rate under IEEPA, or a flat rate duty of USD 80, USD 160, or USD 200 per item, depending on the country’s tariff bracket.
“The suspension underscores the immediate fallout of Washington’s new trade measures, which are expected to disrupt global e-commerce and hit exporters in India and other countries that depended on small-value, duty-free shipping,” Srivastava said.
To be used for maritime surveillance, utility tasks, disaster management, and low-intensity maritime operations
The Ministry of Defence is looking to procure 76 naval utility helicopters — 51 for the Indian Navy and 25 for the Coast Guard.
These helicopters will be used for maritime surveillance, utility tasks, disaster management, and low-intensity maritime operations.
The MoD has issued a Request for Information (RFI) — the first step in the tendering process — to identify vendors capable of manufacturing the helicopters in India.
The ministry has specified that the helicopters should be capable of performing multiple roles by day and night, including maritime search and rescue, casualty evacuation, and transportation of troops and cargo.
The requirement is for twin-engine helicopters with a payload capacity of 5.5 tonnes, capable of operating from ship decks and sea.
At present, the Navy and Coast Guard use a mix of helicopters for these roles. This includes the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) produced by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), and Cheetah/Chetak helicopters, which are based on the French-designed Aérospatiale Alouette III and Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama, produced in India.
This RFI is the second issued by the MoD this month to procure helicopters. Earlier, the MoD had floated an RFI to procure 200 helicopters — 120 for reconnaissance and surveillance for the Indian Army’s aviation corps and 80 for the Indian Air Force.
The growing demand to phase out ageing helicopters has intensified in recent years following a series of accidents, including several fatal ones.
