The Army killed three infiltrators in two separate operations along the Line of Control in Kupwara district of northern Kashmir.
Army officials informed that a joint anti-infiltration operation was launched by the Army and Jammu and Kashmir police following Intelligence inputs regarding likely infiltration bids on the intervening night of Aug 28-29 in Tangdhar of Kupwara district.
“One terrorist is confirmed to have been eliminated. The operation is in progress,” the army informed.
Another operation was launched around the same time in Machil in Kupwara district following suspicious movement. “Suspicious movement was observed in bad weather and was engaged with effective firing by own troops; two terrorists have been eliminated in the ongoing anti-infiltration operation,” read the official statement.
The army claims to have recovered two AK rifles, a pistol, four hand grenades and other war-like stores. “Search operation is in progress,” read the statement.
Over the past few months, operations were conducted in Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora districts of northern Kashmir against infiltrators. In Jammu, infiltration attempts, attacks and recovery of weapons were reported from Kathua, Samba, Udhampur, Doda, Reasi, Rajouri and Poonch districts. The infiltration bids are being carried out at a time when J&K is gearing up for the three-phase assembly election from September 15 after around ten years.
The Army and BSF officials have maintained that despite the fresh ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan from February 2021, several infiltration attempts have been made across the LoC and the International Border in Jammu region.
Vice Admiral CR Praveen Nair Appointed Commandant of Indian Naval Academy
Commissioned into the Indian Navy on July 1, 1991, Vice Admiral Nair has an impressive academic and professional background. He is an alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, and the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, the U.S. Additionally, he holds an MPhil in Defence and Strategic Studies from Mumbai University.
Throughout his career, Vice Admiral Nair has served in various key positions, including as Signal Communication Officer on several Indian Naval ships, Fleet Electronic Warfare Officer, and Fleet Communications Officer of the Western Fleet. He also held the position of Fleet Operations Officer of the Eastern Fleet from 2018 to 2019.
He has also led the Missile Corvette INS Kirch, commissioned the Guided Missile Destroyer INS Chennai, and commanded the Indian Navy’s largest warship, the Aircraft Carrier INS Vikramaditya. His shore assignments have included roles as Directing Staff at the Naval War College in Goa, Officer-in-Charge of Signal School, and Commodore (Personnel) at the Directorate of Personnel, Naval Headquarters. Furthermore, Vice Admiral Nair has been a member of the Indian Naval Strategic and Operational Council (INSOC), the Navy’s premier think-tank, for over three years.
Commanded Western Fleet
Promoted to Rear Admiral in January 2022, Vice Admiral Nair was appointed as the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Policy and Plans) at Naval Headquarters. Before his current appointment as Commandant of the INA, he commanded the Western Fleet of the Indian Navy upon his promotion to Vice Admiral.
There is likely to be much more democratic discussion before the new districts’ proposal is inked.
THE August 26 tweet by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, announcing five new districts in Ladakh, had all the panache of grand declarations. It was a bolt from New Delhi’s muddy-blue sky. A surprise — cryptic, populist and authoritative — it lacked other details despite the transformational potential of the proposed administrative exercise.
The initial Ladakhi reaction was surprised curiosity, which grew to become suspicion and, within a couple of days, evolved to a mild protest in Sankoo, one of the areas directly impacted by the proposal. This latest development in Ladakh, therefore, needs to be discussed and understood in its historical and political context. First, the historical chronology.
Ladakh’s population was barely 2 per cent of the erstwhile state of J&K. In its first phase after the Dogra divestiture began in 1954, citizens of what is now Leh district expressed their desire to secede from the then state of J&K, but without legal or institutional definition of what that meant. The genesis of this demand was the fear for the vulnerability of Ladakh’s linguistic, cultural and religious identities. After the 1962 war, however, this intra-state dissent lay beneath the surface, although, on occasion, overtly expressed in the language of ethno-political polemics.
This changed dramatically in 1989, as Ladakh’s opposition to the increasingly demonised Kashmiri became shrill and confessional. In the district of Leh, there was even an anti-Ladakhi Muslim phase, bordering on Islamophobia, that lingered for some time. The 1979 division of Ladakh into two districts, Leh and Kargil, did not help in stemming this trend. These two watershed events served to intensify an older, more complex rivalry between Kargil and Leh, but this time with communal overtones. Leh and Kargil, predictably, drifted further apart economically, socially and politically.
The third phase of this drift between Leh and Kargil came with the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, which inducted a Hindu-majoritarian BJP government at the Centre. During the elections, the BJP promised Ladakh Union Territory (UT) status, a specific demand that was first cogently articulated in 2002 and pursued as a concrete agenda since. Thupstan Chhewang, one of Ladakh’s seniormost activists and respected politicians, was elected on the BJP ticket as Ladakh’s sole Member of Parliament. However, either because of a priori intent or later neglect, the BJP’s promised UT status remained undelivered. Procrastination planted the seeds of pessimism.
The latter part of this same phase saw Ladakhis assertively research the UT model and other governance structures in the eastern Himalaya and, with a growing perception that the BJP had let them down. This sentiment gathered steam in 2018 when Chhewang resigned as Ladakh’s MP and from his primary membership in the BJP. Regardless, the BJP remained popular in Ladakh where it once again won the 2019 parliamentary seat. Moreover, in 2020, the party swept the Hill Development Council elections. Despite these victories, even in 2019, an empowered UT with meaningful governing powers remained undelivered, spawning murmurs and protests in Ladakh.
The Home Minister’s recent virtual edict on X (formerly Twitter) and a bulked version of it with no real additional information from the PIB (Press Information Bureau) heralds the fourth phase in Ladakh’s modern politics. This structure suggests seven districts for Ladakh, including the extant ones of Leh and Kargil. The proposed five new districts are Zangskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra and Changthang. But initial inquiries suggest that the decision was made without consulting the leadership of Leh’s Apex Body or Kargil’s KDA (Kargil Democratic Alliance) bloc, even as both have been in prickly negotiations with New Delhi for over a year now. However, Ladakhis have learnt that ostensibly favourable announcements can be deceptive, as illustrated by the 2023-24 anti-BJP protests and that party’s dramatic loss in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Indeed, there have already been pushbacks.
The first of these is the question of the political and administrative relationship between the seven districts. For example, while each district will have unique needs economically, socially and infrastructurally, how will their interactions be defined? In the case of disputes between districts, how will such cases be adjudicated? How will the funds be distributed? And to facilitate such critical logistics, will there be a locally elected overarching body, the equivalent of an assembly in states? How will that function? Such questions and more will have to be answered before implementation.
In praxis, however, any devolution of genuine political power to the district level is welcome. It has the potential for grassroots decision-making, genuine local representation, rapid policy implementation and immediacy in accountability. But this tool of democracy, like several others in its armoury, is a double-edged sword. It can be used either to foster grassroots democracy or centralise power, particularly if the all-important funds are disbursed from the Centre. In Ladakh’s experience, Centrally disbursed funds tend to dilute ground priorities and slacken accountability to local constituents. This is one reason for the scepticism already palpable in Ladakh.
Another reason for Ladakh’s distrust of this latest announcement from New Delhi is that it has the potential to forestall, if not eliminate, plans for renewed protests on the non-delivery of the BJP’s promises over the last 10 years. In other words, is the proposed promulgation a tactical move to buy time as the BJP adjusts itself to a Parliament with a severely reduced majority for the NDA? However, it does not appear Ladakhis are going to be diverted by such tactical measures. In fact, there is already a seeming doubling down.
During a press conference on August 29, Feroz Khan, Kargil’s former Chief Executive Councillor, thanked the government and congratulated the people of the new districts. Significantly, he followed up on his preamble by pointing out that the ‘redistricting’ exercise had ignored Kargil’s proposal to include Shakar-Chigtan and Sankoo-Suru in the exercise. He then elaborated that this was important because the administrative ‘redistricting’ should not devolve into an electoral delimitation exercise. In other words, “He was preempting the possibility that the demarcations could be a plan to ghettoise Muslim or Buddhist populations once ‘shifted’ from their current location in Kargil or Leh districts,” explained Mustafa Haji, senior advocate and political commentator, when I asked him to elaborate on the meaning of Khan’s assertion.
It has been a mere five days since the Home Minister’s tweet. Judging by the focused, swift and analytically sound responses from Ladakh, there is likely to be much more democratic discussion, as well there should be, before the new districts’ proposal is inked.
THE commissioning of INS Arighaat, India’s second nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, marks an important step towards boosting the country’s naval prowess and nuclear deterrence capabilities. India is keen to bolster its N-triad, comprising weapons on land, in the air and at sea. This is understandable as China has modernised its nuclear programme in recent years, starting the production of its next-generation ballistic missile submarine and holding nuclear-armed sea patrols on a regular basis. In terms of operational nuclear warheads, China (500) is way ahead of India (172). However, India has close ties with both the US and Russia, which have over 1,700 such warheads each.
Beijing’s muscle-flexing in the Indian Ocean Region has been keeping Delhi on its toes. According to the Swedish think-tank SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), India is strengthening the undersea leg of its nuclear triad as well as developing long-range missiles. The presence of INS Arighaat is expected to send out a strong message to China that India is not to be trifled with in the seas.
It is commendable that the submarine has indigenous systems and equipment which were conceptualised, designed, manufactured and integrated by Indian scientists, industry and naval personnel. This underscores the significance of aatmanirbharta (self-reliance) in the defence sector for a country which remains the biggest arms importer in the world. At the same time, the stakeholders should guard against the temptation of resting on their laurels and becoming complacent. China’s nuclear one-upmanship knows no bounds; so does the secrecy of its operations. No wonder the US, concerned about Beijing’s rapid N-weapon build-up, has made a renewed push for holding talks on nuclear arms with the fellow superpower. While keeping a close eye on these developments, India should ensure that its ballistic submarine programme continues to uphold the policy of having ‘credible minimum deterrence’ in sync with its ‘no first use’ commitment.
WMCC meet: India, China discuss situation along LAC to narrow down differences
The MEA says the two sides had a ‘frank, constructive and forward-looking’ exchange of views on situation along the LAC
New Delhi, August 29
India and China on Thursday conducted the 31st meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) at Beijing.
These meetings are on the resolution of the ongoing military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh.
This WMCC meet was the second in a month, the previous one being held on July 31.
The Ministry of External Affairs said “It was reiterated that restoration of peace and tranquillity, and respect for LAC are the essential basis for restoration of normalcy in bilateral relations”.
The MEA said the two sides had a “frank, constructive and forward-looking” exchange of views on the situation along the LAC.
“This was to narrow down the differences and find early resolution of the outstanding issues,” the MEA said, adding “For this, they further agreed for intensified contact through diplomatic and military channels”.
The meeting was to carry forward discussions between the two Foreign Ministers – S Jaishankar and Wang Yi — in their two meetings, last month, at Astana Kazakhstan and Vientiane Laos.
Gourangalal Das, Joint Secretary (East Asia) from the Ministry of External Affairs led the Indian delegation. The Chinese delegation was led by Hong Liang, Director General of the Boundary & Ocean Affairs Department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The two sides, in the meantime decided to jointly uphold peace and tranquility on the ground in border areas in accordance with relevant bilateral agreements, protocols and understandings reached between the two governments.
3. ‘Will Agnipath corrode the finest institution of india?’ by Lt Gen Vijay Oberoi, former Army Commander Western Command and later Vice Chief of Army Staff.
4. The rationale behind the Agniveer System is unclear: change for change’s sake, can result in failure’ by Lt Gen Harwant Singh, former GOC 16 Corps and later Deputy Chief of Army Staff.
6. ‘Agnipath: a path towards self-immolation?’ by Lt Gen PG Kamath, former Chief of Staff, HQ Central Command and later Commandant, Army War College, Mhow.
7. ‘Bound to burst- the Agnipath bubble’ by Lt Gen Prakash Katoch, an Officer of the Parachute Regiment (Special Forces) and former DG Information Systems.Regards,Col RajanBangalore,
On two occasions, he was awarded the Sena Medal for gallantry while combating terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, August 29
Not many soldiers get decorated twice for gallantry, and thrice is rarer still. A determined boy from the remote highlands of Himachal Pradesh setting his boots on several battlefields in India and overseas, Major Sudhir Walia personified courage and dedication to duty.
It was in the dense jungles of Kupwara during the early morning of August 29, 25 years ago, that the battle-hardened young officer, all of 31 years, made the supreme sacrifice while fighting terrorists that was recognised with the Ashok Chakra, the highest peacetime award for gallantry and the third decoration for him.
After having served with the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Sri Lanka, he opted to move out form the confines of a cushy job at South Block in New Delhi, where he was the aide-de-camp to then Chief of Army Staff General VP Malik, Major Walia volunteered to join his unit, Ninth Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (9 Para) that was engaged in evicting Pakistani intruders along the Line of Control during the 1999 Kargil conflict. His battalion was subsequently re-deployed for anti-terrorist operations in Kashmir.His story begins at Banuri village in Kangra district, where his father Rulia Ram Walia, a retired Subedar Major and mother, Rajeswari Devi, resided. After attending the local government school, he toiled hard to get admission to the Sainik School at Sujanpur Tihra, from where he made it to the National Defence Academy (NDA), Khadakwasla. For his father, it was a matter of intense pride to see his son on his way to become an officer.
After getting commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Jat Regiment from the Indian Military Academy in June 1988, he proceeded to Sri Lanka. On return, he opted for the Special Forces (SF) and was allotted 9 Para (SF), one of the SF battalions permanently based in Jammu and Kashmir.
On two occasions, he was awarded the Sena Medal for gallantry while combating terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. One was for carrying out covert operations to neutralise several terrorists and destroying their hideouts, and the other for being part of an expedition to scale Mount Brammah-II in the Kishtwar region, that was an armed, fighting expedition aimed at training in extremely challenging conditions. He also had two six-month stints at Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield.
In 1997, he was sent to the United States for a specialised course, in which he excelled. He also addressed a gathering at the Pentagon, headquarters of the US Department of Defence. The book, “Kargil: From Surprise to Victory by Gen Malik”, mentions that it was during this course, that Sudhir was called ‘Colonel’ by his course mates for his competence and professionalism.
When the Kargil War broke out, he obtained special permission from the Army Chief to join the battle. Within 10 days of leaving Delhi, he led an assault team from 9 Para to capture the 17,000-foot high Zulu Top in the Mushkoh Valley. This success had come on July 25, just a day before the war officially ended. The book goes on to mention that when he was asked by the Chief about his attack without needing to acclimatise, Sudhir replied, “Sir, you know that I’m a pahari (native of the mountains). I don’t need acclimatisation.”
Just over a month later came the fateful day. On August 29, 1999, at about 8.30 AM, Major Sudhir Kumar Walia led a squad of five men from 9 Para into the dense undergrowth of Haphruda forest in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir. Soon he heard voices of militants but was unable to see them. He along with his buddy crawled uphill and on reaching a knoll, observed two armed militants barely four meters ahead and a large hideout in a depression 15 meters below, according to the citation for his Ashok Chakra.
The officer immediately fired, killing the closest sentry and charged at the second, who jumped back towards the hideout. Major Sudhir, without hesitation charged at the hideout with only his buddy giving him covering fire. The militants, who numbered about 20, were shocked and rushed out in an attempt to flee. The officer singlehandedly grappled with them and firing from a distance of two meters, killed four militants. In this action, however, he was hit on his face, chest and arm and fell down bleeding profusely at the entrance of the hideout. Although unable to move, he called up his troop commanders on the radio and directed them to hold fast and not allow the rest of the militants to escape.
“It was only after 35 minutes when the fire fight stopped that he permitted his evacuation. Bleeding profusely, he continued to pass instructions to his troops on his radio set. He passed away holding his set,” the citation states.
The Ashok Chakra awarded for “displaying most conspicuous gallantry and bravery beyond compare” was received by Major Sudhir Walia’s father from then President KR Narayanan during the Republic Day Parade in 2000. A little distance from his house in Banuri, where a toddler had once dreamed big, a square is dedicated to him.
Northern Army Commander Lt Gen MV Suchindra Kumar visited the troops along the Line of Control (LoC) and hinterland in Rajouri sector on Thursday and asked them to maintain comprehensive operational readiness.
The Army commander is undertaking visits to the border areas to review the security measures in place ahead of the three-phase Assembly elections commencing on September 18.
“Lt Gen MV SuchindraKumar, Army Commander, Northern Command, accompanied by WhiteKnight Corps Commander visited forward areas along the Line of Control in Sunderbani sector to review the prevalent security situation,” the Army’s Northern Command said on X.
It said he was briefed on the synergy between security forces and operational preparedness in the region. The Army commander also visited supporting units of the formation and exhorted all ranks to maintain comprehensive operational readiness.
INS Arighaat, India’s 2nd N-sub, joins naval fleet
India’s second nuclear-powered submarine INS Arighaat was commissioned into the Navy in the presence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at Visakhapatnam today. The submarine is capable of carrying nuclear-tipped missiles.
INS Arighaat is an upgraded and deadlier version of its sister, INS Arihant, the first such submarine inducted in 2015.
It is part of India’s nuclear triad — the ability to fire nuclear weapons from land, air and sea. India already has land-based ‘Agni’ series of nuclear-tipped missiles, while another can be fired from air using fighter jets.“India’s nuclear triad will enhance deterrence, help in establishing strategic balance and peace in the region, and play a decisive role in the security of the country,” said Rajnath. INS Arighaat will be under the command and control of the strategic forces command (SFC) that reports to the PM. It can travel at 22-28 kmph on the sea surface and 44 kmph when submerged. INS Arighaat features four launch tubes and carries four nuclear-capable K-4 ‘submarine launched ballistic missiles’ (SLBMs) with range exceeding 3,500 km. It also carries 15 missiles — K-15 — having a range of 750 km. The K-15 can also be mated with nuclear warhead.
Submarines carrying nuclear warheads are classified as ‘ship submersible ballistic nuclear’ (SSBN). INS Arighaat is part of the four-SSBN project. Two more, currently designated as S3 and S4, are under construction. Besides the two SSBNs, India has 16 diesel-electric submarines. But this is much below the 2030 target of 24 envisaged in the Submarine Action Plan cleared by the Cabinet in 1999. China currently has 60 submarines — six SSBNs, six nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) and 48 diesel-electric submarines — as per the US Department of Defence’s annual report.
