Lahore, July 13

The foundation stone of Baba Guru Nanak International University has been laid in Nankana Sahib, the birth place of founder of Sikhism Baba Guru Nanak Dev, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, more that a decade after its construction proposal first surfaced.

The foundation stone of the university was laid by Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar on Friday and would be completed with an amount of over Rs 258 crore spread over 10 acres.

The government, however, has not yet declared about the tentative period the varsity would be built. 

“The construction of the BGNU will begin once the legal formalities in this regard are met,” an official of the Punjab government told PTI on Saturday.

He said the work on this project will begin soon since Nankana Sahib falls in the constituency of Federal Interior Minister Brig Ijaz Shah (retd). 

“Brig Shah is a powerful minister in PM Imran Khan’s cabinet and on his invitation Punjab CM Buzdar came to Nankana Sahib and laid the foundation stone of the BGNIU,” he said.

Brig Shah recently took over as the interior minister.

During the occasion, Buzdar said various neglected districts like Nankana Sahib will be brought at par with the developed cities.

“Establishment of Baba Guru Nanak University in Nankana Sahib is the part of prime minister’s vision to facilitate students in Nankana Sahib and other adjoining districts,” he said.

The decision to construct the university came after the Sikhs living in Pakistan demanded a university after the name of  the founder of their religion Baba Guru Nanak at his birthplace in Nankana Sahib.

The proposal of the university was first surfaced in the Punjab government of Pervaiz Elahi in 2003.

Two years ago in the government of PML-N, the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) gave a final approval to the project.

Then ETPB chairman Siddiqul Farooq said this varsity would help promote religious tourism in Pakistan and also portray country’s good image at international level.

Earlier this year, for the first time a Pakistani university had created the Baba Guru Nanak research chair to promote the message of peace that the Sikh spiritual leader preached.

A motel of the Tourism Development Corporation of Punjab (TDCP) was also inaugurated in Nankana Sahib by the Punjab CM to promote religious tourism.

Buzdar also laid the foundation stone of a road repair project in  Nankana Sahib district that will be completed with Rs 150 million.

“A dual road will also be laid from Gurdawara Tanboo Sahib to Gurdwara Janam Asthaan. The road connecting the Guru Nanak University to Nankana-Warburton Road will also be constructed,” a senior official said. — PTI

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said defence force ..

Those unfairly exploiting the system should be given exemplary punishments, but demonising of soldiers and threatening withdrawal of facilities is not good for the morale of the army.

Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 5

Weighed down by salaries and pensions, the defence budget announced today remains the same as the one announced on February 1. The allocation is 7.93 per cent of the Budget estimates of the last fiscal.

The budget for this fiscal will be Rs 3,18,931.22 cr ($44.74 billion), the same amount set aside in the interim budget in February, and a sum of Rs 1,12,080 crore has been allocated for defence pensions. The combined budget — for operations, salaries, pensions and capital — stands at Rs 4,31,011 crore, which constitutes 15.5 per cent of the government’s spending.

The budget for the last fiscal was Rs 2,95,511 crore and the hike is Rs 23,420 crore this fiscal.

The services are literally weighed down by bulging “establishment” costs -euphuism for salaries and pensions. The salaries of the three services and the civilians work out to Rs 1,19,620 crore and now form 37.51 per cent of the budget. In other words, salaries and pensions take up more money than what is allocated for modernisation.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who served as the Minister for Defence in the previous government, allowed exemption of basic customs duty on import of defence equipment not manufactured in India.

“This will have an impact of augmenting the defence budget by approximately Rs 25,000 crore on account of savings in expenditure on customs duty over the next five years,” the Ministry of Defence said tonight.

The budget has an allocation of Rs 1,08,248 crore as capital expenses meant for new equipment, weapons, aircraft, naval warships, Army vehicles. The MoD will spend around 31.7 per cent of the total Central Government capital expenditure.

The spending is way behind that of China. Data released by Swedish think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on April 29 titled “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2018” says: “China, the world’s second-largest (behind US) military spender, allocated $250 billion to the military in 2018, which accounted for 14 per cent of all global spending.”

Issue of disability pension also raised

In the last two years, 36 Members of Parliament purchased vehicles disposed off by the Army, the Ministry of Defence informed Parliament on Monday.

n the last two years, 36 Members of Parliament purchased vehicles disposed off by the Army, the Ministry of Defence informed Parliament on Monday.

The vehicles were made available to all the members who had applied. Eleven MPs were allotted vehicles from Vehicle Sub Depot Meerut, 15 from Ordnance Depot Avadi, three from Central Ordnance Depot Chheoki, two from Central Ordnance Depot Mumbai, two from Central Armoured Fighting Vehicle Depot Kirkee, and one MP each was allotted vehicles from 224 ABOD Jodhpur, Northern Command Vehicle Depot Udhampur and Vehicle Depot Panagarh,” the MoD said.

The Army has a policy of discarding old vehicles that are sent to depots almost as junk as they go past their prime. Army vehicles face heavy wear and tear as they are used in hilly regions with tough terrain and poor roads.

All the Members of Parliament got the vehicle from the same depot from where they had asked for.

This information was given by Raksha Rajya Mantri Shri Shripad Naik in a written reply to Shri Ajay Pratap Singh in Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Many of the cutting-edge platforms that we now operate are the outcome of lessons learnt 20 years ago

Ajay Banerjee in New Delhi

It was in the summer of 1999 that the Indian Air Force (IAF) was called into battle during the Kargil conflict with Pakistan. The outcome changed the thinking of strategic planners in New Delhi and added heft to the IAF war machinery to kickstart a new ‘era’. Many of the new cutting-edge platforms the IAF now operates are the outcome of lessons learnt 20 years ago.

The ‘Kargil War’ (May-July 1999) was fought at altitudes in excess of 15,000 feet in the Himalayas. The IAF was tasked to bomb the Pakistani army-occupied locations between 15,000 feet and 18,000 feet. No country, no air force and no fighter jet had been used to drop armament at such altitudes. “It was unique. It meant pilots were flying at 30,000 feet to hit at targets that were some 12,000 feet away. The rarefied air changes the dynamics and trajectory of the bomb,” said a senior IAF officer who, as a young pilot, was part of the strikes on Tiger Hill, a 16,000-feet high massif.

A restrictive mandate was to not cross the Line of Control (LoC) — the de facto 749-km boundary between India and Pakistan. Enemy troops had occupied winter-vacated posts all along a 168-km Himalayan ridgeline that forms the Drass-Kargil-Batalik-Turtuk axis of the LoC. Conditions are tough, rugged, tree-less, desolate, undulating and punishingly cold.

How Kargil was fought

Between the 1971 Indo-Pak war and Kargil, an interim of 28 years, technology had progressed while geo-strategic alignments were being reworked after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. India was facing sanctions from the US in the aftermath of the May 1998 Nuclear tests and terrorists like Osama Bin Laden were still not on the hit list of the US. Satellite imagery was just making its debut in India.

Besides the several technological handicaps, India lacked precision weapons. The existing 1,000-pound ‘dumb bombs’ were hurriedly retro-fitted with a ‘kit’ within 12 days. India had purchased the ‘Paveway’ bomb from the US; the first tranche had come in 1997, but the imposition of sanctions following the Nuclear tests had left the integration incomplete. In stepped the Israelis to fit the kit, hence making the first precision bomb drop for the IAF.

IAF Chief Air Chief Marshall BS Dhanoa, speaking at an event at Gwalior on June 24, described the air strikes at Tiger Hill and Muntho Dhalo as “turning points of the Kargil War; it helped ground forces in their advance.”

In the middle of May that year, the Chief of IAF Air Chief Marshall AY Tipnis flew into Srinagar and asked two young pilots if the attacks could be carried out. The answer was: “It can be done.”

By May 25, a MiG 21 fighter squadron (consisting some 16-18 planes), commanded by then Wing Commander Dhanoa, had been re-located from Bathinda to Srinagar. This was augmented with another MiG 27 squadron. Two Mirage 2000 squadrons were forward located from Gwalior to Ambala and Adampur. On May 27, the IAF lost two fighter jets, both hit by shoulder-fired US-made Stinger missiles. One pilot, Squadron leader Ajay Ahuja, lost his life.

On May 28, four IAF personnel lost their lives as a Mi-17 copter was hit. These were our last losses. The IAF went on to carry out 578 strikes, 462 combat air patrols and 149 reconnaissance sorties during the Kargil conflict.

One of the toughest parts was accurate photo imagery. The Mirage used to have a film-based camera that needed to be flown back to the base for the black & white film to be watched over by a group of pilots. Today, the images and videos are beamed live in high definition. At one stage, the iconic MiG 25 — the Soviet-era super high speed plane with the ability to fly at 70,000 feet — was pressed into service over Mushkoh valley, west of Dras to take pictures as it could fly well out of range of Pak fighter jets and ground-fired missiles.

The big changes since

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the strategic community ‘woke up’ to new realities. Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (retd), who is now the Additional Director General of the Centre for Air Power Studies, says, “The very first need was to have a helicopter that can fire armament at those altitudes.” The Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) made by Hindustan Aeronauctics Limited had the latest Shakti engine (jointly produced by Turbomeca and HAL). One of the key parameters was its ability to fly high (up to 21,500 feet) and launch missiles at that kind of altitude, he says.

Twenty years after Kargil, we have top-class precision weapons. The Mirage 2000 pilots dropped precision-guided armament from 80 km away to strike Jaish-e-Mohd terror training camp at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on February 26. In these years, India has also developed its own beyond visual range (BVR) missile, the Aastra, made by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The IAF also uses a European-origin BVR missile and one that is Russian-origin.

A series of mountain radars dot the Himalayas, providing real time update of the incoming threats. India has acquired air-borne early-warning aircrafts that were effectively used during the four-week combat air patrol launched after the Pulwama terror attack on February 14 and the subsequent air strike on Balakot.

In these 20 years, the IAF has become a fully networked force — its planes send live feeds and videos, satellite, UAVs and radars track live targets. The upcoming S-400 missile from Russia will further change the paradigm.

A flight controller sitting at a monitoring node at Barnala, Punjab, was coordinating the air duel over Nowshera on February 27 and the entire air space and was being fed a live feed from air-borne radars and UAVs.

The fighter fleet has a new jet, the twin-engine Sukhoi 30 MKI, a powerful air dominance fighter; 250 of them are serving right now. The fleet of MiG 29 and Mirage 2000 is being upgraded. The first of the Rafale is expected to be in India by September. Strategic lift planes, the C-130 J from Lockheed Martin of the US and the C-17 from the Boeing, have been added to the ageing Russian-origin AN 332 and Il 76 planes. The US planes provide huge advantage in lifting men and machines.

New heavy lift helicopters, Chinook, have been inducted at Chandigarh. These can deliver to mountain tops small body of troops who would otherwise need to climb, hence bringing pace to operations. Another few weeks and brand-new advanced attack copters, the Apache 64 E, will join the IAF.

Singh said that as and when required the HAL borrows from banks to meet its working capital requirements.

The HAL has concrete orders to manufacture Su30 MKI, Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, Dornier, Advanced Light Helicopter, Chetak, Cheetal helicopters among others and defence services have paid the aerospace major Rs 8,140 crore in the last six months, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said June 24. Arrears of Rs 868.14 crore are outstanding with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for its contractors, he said.

“The present capacity available in HAL is adequate to fulfil the existing orders, projects in hand. Currently, HAL has firm orders to manufacture platforms like Su-30 MKI, LCA, DO-228 (Dornier), ALH, Chetak and Cheetal helicopters,” Singh in a written response to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

He said that as and when required the HAL borrows from banks to meet its working capital requirements.

Just before the polls, the Congress had launched an offensive against the government alleging that Dassault Aviation, the makers of Rafale fighter jet, overlooked the PSU and gave the offset contract to another private company.

Last month, HAL has posted an all-time high turnover of Rs 19,705 crore, registering a growth of 7.8 per cent in 2018-19.