The movement of Pak army was witnessed from the Chakri border outpost in Gurdaspur district.

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, October 6

The BSF has recorded “unusual vehicular movement” of Pakistani army in Narowal and Shakargarh tehsils across the international border (IB) following which intelligence agencies are regularly updating security agencies about the latest developments. The movement is visible from almost BSF Border Outposts (BOP) in Punjab. In Gurdaspur, this movement was recorded by jawans through binoculars manning the towers at the Chakri BOP while in Pathankot officials were monitoring it at the Dinda (forward) BOP.

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A BOP is an outpost maintained by the Border Security Force to watch over and safeguard its border.

Shakargarh and Narowal are barely 10 km from the IB fencing located in Gurdaspur district.Senior BSF officers confirmed that vehicular movement was visible through surveillance equipment, including binoculars, available at the BOPs.However, no officer wanted to go on record fearing the repercussions of an executive order (EO) issued by the BSF Director General recently.The order warns all officers, barring the Punjab Frontier IG, from speaking to the media. “Disciplinary action will be initiated against officers who speak to the press,” reads the note.In fact, several similar orders have arrived at sector headquarters in the last few days making officers wary of going public, the EO being the latest one.Officers confirmed that a day after the Indian Army conducted surgical strikes in PoK, light movement of Pakistani army officials was witnessed.“However, with the passage of time the intensity of the build-up has gone from light to mild. Jawans are cleaning bunkers from inside and elephant grass surrounding these bunkers is also being removed. Probably, they must be doing a reconnaissance of the area. Patrolling by their jawans is also not being ruled out. It is also possible that they may be expecting infiltration from the Indian side. Nothing can be ruled out at this juncture and all possibilities are open,” said an officer not willing to be quoted because of the executive order.Sources said this type of activity was expected after the PoK strikes.The army is being regularly updated on the build-up by intelligence agencies.Dinda BOP shot into limelight when the NIA feared that the four JeM militants who were involved in the January 2 Pathankot Air Force station attack had entered Indian territory through this BOP.  Belongings and food packets of the terrorists were found buried in a pit near this place.BSF, which monitors the 553 km of border in Punjab, has been asked to step up its surveillance in this area.

Tribune news service

Amritsar, October 2

Amritsar Vikas Manch (AVM), appreciating the Indian military action against terrorists in Pakistan, has urged the government to control war hysteria.Its members, in a meeting convened here today, stated that a border district like Amritsar always suffered the most during a war as its industry and agriculture incurred massive losses.The government’s precautionary evacuation from border villages of this district created panic among urban traders, businessmen and industrialists besides the public.It seems that the government had shown haste in ordering the evacuation drive in all border villages of Punjab whereas no such move had taken place in border states like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir. This evacuation move may adversely affect the business, trade and industries of Amritsar, the main border city of Punjab. Instead of raising the morale of public to face any untoward situation, the government machinery spread panic itself. When other border states were in a calm and steady state, Punjabis were made to feel as if they were in a war-like situation, members of the AVM said.AVM president Kulwant Singh Ankhi said many big business and industries like Partap Steel Mills, Shambu Nath Factory of Sulphuric Acid, Hind Thermometers along with textile units of Gate Hakiman, Puttalighar and Chheharta shut their operations leaving thousands of workers, technicians, engineers and ministerial staff jobless in the war years of 1965 and 1971.He recalled that in Partap Steel Mills, more than a thousand workers became unemployed when the factory was shifted to another city. The value of property also nosedived during that period.No evacuation was encouraged by the government in 1965 and 1971 war periods. But the brave residents of border villages helped Army personnel in many ways. The residents supplied food in bunkers, boosting morale of the soldiers. But why the government was asking border village residents to evacuate their homes in today’s time was not understandable, he said.

Pritam Singh
Reducing India-Pak tensions is a historic necessity. Regions far from the borders can afford to play warmongering games, but the border regions would be devastated in both countries if war breaks out.

BUSSED OUT: Residents of Ranian village on the border in Amritsar district being shifted to safer places on Thursday. Vishal Kumar/Tribune

There is a palpable danger of India-Pakistan conflict escalating after the Indian Army’s recent operation against ‘terror’ sites across the border. India and Pakistan have previously fought four wars and each of those wars has led to loss of lives and destruction of nature on both sides. These mutually destructive wars have also hindered the initiatives at reducing poverty and ill health in both the countries.A very basic lesson in economics teaches us that resources are always scarce and overuse of resources in one sphere is always at the cost of resources in another sphere. A development economist once did a global survey of solider-teacher ratio in different countries and found that countries with higher soldier-teacher ratio have lower human development than those with lower soldier- teacher ratio. A very simple conclusion is that societies which have more resources devoted to teaching than those devoted to  building armies are higher in human well-being index. The most impressive example is of Costa Rica, a Latin American country which decided in 1948 to have no army at all because it decided that it will never attack another country and believed that since none of its neighbours will feel threatened by it, it does not have any fear of being attacked by any of them. The country maintains only a police force for internal security measures. A calculation done a few years ago showed that although Costa Rica ranked 68th in the world in terms of per capita Gross Domestic Product, it ranked Number 1 in the “Happy Planet Index” and also Number 1 in the World Database of Happiness. In 1987, Costa Rican President Oscar Aria in an address to the US Congress outlined the remarkable vision of his country when he said:“I belong to a small country that was not afraid to abolish its army in order to increase its strength. In my homeland you will not find a single tank, a single artillery piece, a single warship or a single military helicopter…. Today we threaten no one, neither our own people nor our neighbours. Such threats are absent not because we lack tanks but because there are few of us who are hungry, illiterate or unemployed.” This bold vision was one reason that he was awarded, very deservingly, the Nobel Peace Prize that year. The peace dividend that Costa Rica earned also led to the country being selected for the headquarters for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and also the United Nations’ University of Peace. Not every country has the fortune, either because of its geo-political location or due to the quality of its leadership to take the path Costa Rica took, but every country has a choice between deescalating or escalating conflict with its neighbours. In the case of India-Pakistan relations, there have been ups and downs due mainly to the quality of political leadership in both countries. Undoubtedly, the Kashmir issue is the most intractable in the relations between the two countries. It is an internal conflict within India and any Pakistan interference is because the Indian political leadership has not shown the boldness of vision that is required to solve this issue. An external power can, if it wants to, intervene in an internal conflict of another country but it cannot create that conflict. Why is it that Pakistan cannot intervene in Haryana or Madhya Pradesh or any other Hindi-speaking state? The answer is that none of these states has any fundamental conflict with the Indian Union. Even in Punjab, there was some Pakistan interference only after there was internal disaffection in the state after the 1984 Operation Bluestar action at the Golden Temple. Similarly, India was able to intervene in 1971 in what was East Bengal then because that region had conflict with the Punjabi-Urdu dominated establishment in Pakistan. Or for that matter, India now intervenes in some form or another in Baluchistan because that region has a conflict with the central Pakistani state but India is unable to intervene in any way in Pakistani Punjab because that region has full identification with the central Pakistani state.India’s problem in Kashmir or Pakistan’s problem in Baluchistan is not unique. In fact, the major forms of armed conflict in today’s world are not between countries but within countries. There has not been a major war for quite some time between countries but the world is ravaged today by internal conflicts. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Chechnya in Russia and the Uyghur Autonomous Region in China are the major known trouble spots of internal conflicts. The late Edward Said had once made a remarkable observation that the twentieth century was a century of the birth of nations. He referred both to the process of decolonisation that gave birth to many nation states such as India and Pakistan, but also to the struggles of smaller nationalities within large nation states to shape their own destinies. That process is continuing in the twenty-first century.Countries with developed democratic cultures and institutions have found democratic ways of dealing with internal nationality aspirations, such as Scotland in the UK and Quebec in Canada, but developing countries lacking such structures have become arenas of armed conflicts. A major study done by Prof Frances Stewart and her colleagues at Oxford has found that countries with poverty are more prone to violent conflicts, and the violent conflicts, in turn, further lead to more poverty by destroying infrastructure and through distorted resource allocation.In the long run, path to peace does lie in India resolving its internal conflict in Kashmir but waiting for that long run does not mean that steps cannot be taken in the interim to deescalate conflict. It is important to recognise that there are uneven regional implications of conflict. Regions far away from the borders can afford to play warmongering games because their stakes are next to nothing but the border regions would be devastated in both countries if tensions continue and war breaks out. The political and community leaders in the border regions, irrespective of their party affiliations, have a moral duty at this historical juncture to raise their voice against those who are itching for escalating conflict.The writer is a Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

US, Russia and China have urged India, Pakistan for restraint. AFP

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 2

With major global powers like the US, Russia and China urging India and Pakistan to resolve disputes and reduce tensions, the chances of escalation to the latest war-type hysteria are receding.In India, the calculation is that barring the usual firing across the Line of Control (LoC), matters will not escalate. But the guard is up as Pakistan could try a new tactic to counter the Indian Army’s cross-LoC strike on terror camps on September 29.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)Though it may be too early to think of a dialogue, going by recent incidents, tensions have defused slowly. Almost a year after the Operation Parakaram (December 2001 to October 2002), Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had taken a call on opening a dialogue with Pakistan. The ceasefire along the LoC in November 2003 had been agreed upon. The composite dialogue had carried on ‘well’ for the next five years till the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008. After the Mumbai attacks, it took several months for the first official engagement.As of now, Beijing has favoured direct bilateral talks between India and Pakistan to iron out the wrinkles. China holds an economic interest in both countries. It has a US $46 billion investment in the China-Pakistan economic corridor (CPEC) that connects its Xinjiang province (north of Kashmir) with Gawadar port in the Arabian Sea. This is road, rail and petroleum pipeline connection. With India, China has bilateral annual trade of nearly US $80 billion with India being a major market for China’s exports.“As for the tension between Pakistan and India, recently Chinese side has been in communication with both sides through different channels,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing in Beijing last week.New Delhi and Beijing had conducted pre-planned counter-terrorism and security dialogue and it happened after the September 18 terror attack on an Indian military establishment at Uri in northern Kashmir.Air Vice Marshall Kapil Kak (retd), a former fighter pilot who fought two wars with Pakistan, says, “While being prepared in every way to respond potently to any reaction from Pakistan Army, we need to rework our arithmetic to initiate talks at the NSA level to begin with for restoration of a semblance of normality in bilateral relations.”Air Vice Marshal Kak, who has been a powerful voice among New Delhi’s think-tanks and track-II diplomacy circles,  cites the example of  Vajpayee and his initiative to argue: “Such an initiative would be a true indicator of India’s maturation as a great power in the making”.The US, on its part, has asked Pakistan to close all terrorist safe havens and target all militant groups, including those that target neighbouring countries. India made a pitch at the UN for isolating nations that nurture, peddle and export terror.  Russia has also supported the US and called upon both Pakistan and India to show restraint and resolve all the outstanding issues through peaceful means. 

GUWAHATI: A father-son officer duo has achieved a rare feat in the Indian Air Force – flying a helicopter together.

HT PHOTOAir Vice-Marshal Manvendra Singh (right) and his son Flight Lieutenant Siddharth Singh after the flight.

Air Vice-Marshal Manavendra Singh and son Flight Lieutenant Siddharth Singh flew an Mi-17 V5 together during an air fest at the advanced landing ground near Meghalaya’s capital, Shillong, on Saturday.

“This is possibly not the first time that a father-son duo has flown an IAF aircraft together, but such cases are rare,” defence spokesperson, Group Captain Amit Mahajan told HT from Shillong. Manavendra Singh, the senior officer in-charge of administration at the Upper Shillong-headquartered Eastern Air Command, has 6,700 hours of flying to his credit. Siddharth Singh was commissioned in 2011 in the helicopter stream.

Shamsher Singh Bisht, president of the Personnel Below Officers Rank Purva Sainik Welfare Association, demands facilities in Dehradun on Friday. Tribune photo: Abhyudaya Kotnala

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, September 30

Shamsher Singh Bisht, president of the Personnel Below Officers Rank Purva Sainik Welfare Association (PBOR), today said the Union Government should approve monetary and non-monetary benefits to retired honorary captains, and lieutenants like commissioned officers of Indian defence forces. The government should immediately draft a blueprint in this regard.Bisht, while addressing mediapersons here, said association members had submitted memorandums to state and Union governments, but to no avail. The President of India grants honorary commission to PBOR considering their 28 to 34 years of service. Honorary officers were not treated equally in hospitals and were deprived of other monetary and non-monetary perks. He demanded that honorary officers should be deployed in the Soldiers’ Welfare Board in the state. RD Shahi, UD Joshi, Ramesh Rawat and SS Bisht were present.

The firing is still on. Tribune file photo

Jammu, October 1

Violating the ceasefire again, Pakistani troops on Saturday targeted Indian posts and civilian areas with mortar bombs and heavy machine guns along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir’s Akhnoor tehsil.There was no loss of life or injury to anyone in the firing, which started at 3.30 am and ended at 6 am.Indian troops guarding the border retaliated effectively, defence sources said.“There was heavy shelling of mortar bombs, RPGs and heavy machine guns and small arms firing on forward positions along the LoC in Pallanwala sector and Chamb area of Akhnoor tehsil on Saturday,” sources said.Police said the Pakistani troops targeted Badoo and Chanoo hamlets. “Villagers residing along the LoC were evacuated and shifted to safer places,” a police official said.

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As some border residents were returning to take care of their cattle and homes along the border, Pakistan troops tried to target them by heavy firing, they said.Some houses were hit by bullets from Pakistan in Badoo village, police said.This is the fifth violation of the 2004 ceasefire by Pakistani troops along LoC in J&K in the past four days.Pakistan has stepped up cross-border firing after the surgical strikes on September 29 by the India Army to destroy terror launch pads in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.On Friday, Pakistani troops had restored to small arms firing along LoC in Pallanwala, Chaprial and Samnam areas of Akhnoor sector of Jammu district during the night, Jammu Deputy Commissioner Simrandeep Singh said. PTI

Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 28

In a big blow to Pakistan and to its image, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh today joined India and conveyed their decision to pull out of the SAARC summit scheduled for November in Islamabad.For Pakistan, the major concern is likely to be the fact that all four countries have cited terrorism as the main cause for pulling out of the summit. Sri Lanka has joined the chorus and said the summit would not be possible without India’s participation.

Edit:SAARC summit boycott

According to sources, in its message to Nepal, which holds the chair of SAARC, Afghanistan said because of the increased level of violence as a result of imposed terrorism on Afghanistan, its  President was fully engaged, and would not be able to attend the summit.Bangladesh, which has made its anger with Pakistan very evident, has also conveyed to Nepal that “the growing interference in the internal affairs of Bangladesh by one country has created an environment which is not conducive to the successful hosting of the 19th SAARC Summit”. Dhaka also said that the decision to pull out of the summit was entirely their own and not influenced by India’s decision to boycott the summit.

Bhutan followed suit.

This diplomatic isolation of Pakistan follows India’s decision late last night to pull out of the summit. Unfazed, Pakistan, in the meantime, said it would go ahead with holding of the SAARC summit. This is at variance with the SAARC charter that states that even if one member of the eight-member grouping does not attend, the summit stands cancelled or postponed.Reasons given for not attending summit in Nov Afghanistan: Increased level of violence and fighting as a result of imposed terrorism on Afghanistan, President of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani as the Commander-in-Chief will be fully engaged, and will not be able to attend the summitBangladesh: The growing interference in the internal affairs of Bangladesh by one country has created an environment which is not conducive to the successful hosting of the 19th SAARC Summit in Islamabad in November  Bhutan: Unable to attend the summit due to escalation of terrorism in the region

HE BENCH QUESTIONED WHY AN INDIVIDUAL HAD TO APPROACH COURT FOR RELIEF WHEN APEX COURT HAS ALREADY SETTLED THE MATTER

CHANDIGARH: The Chandigarh bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has come down heavily on defence authorities for not amending a policy to grant disability element to pre-2006 prematurely retired officers, junior commissioned officers and other ranks, who are otherwise eligible, as the same is admitted to post-2006 prematurely retired personnel.

Taking a suo motu cognisance of the case, the AFT bench headed by justice Surinder Singh Thakur questioned why an individual had to approach the court for relief when the apex court has already settled the matter.

The Supreme Court had pronounced its decision in the case of Mahavir Singh Narwal on January 4, 2008, and the administrative decision to grant disability element to personnel below officer’s rank (PBOR), proceedings on premature retirement was taken on January 2010 after two years, but it was limited to only those who file court cases. The AFT said it was against the ratio of ‘Mahavir Singh Narwal’ decided by the apex court.

“Moreover, an administrative decision cannot replace or place any limitation on a court order, which in this case has been done by introducing the clause relief to be given only to those who file court cases. This too is not being complied with by the respondents (defence authorities),” said the judgment.

It added: “If each ministry resorts to such action, there will be chaos and the sanctity and supremacy of the apex court provided by the constitution would be questioned by those who do not have the power to do so creating an analogous condition and the rule of law would be the casualty, which should not happen in a democratic set up like India.”

The bench observed that from 2012 to 2015, the file remained with the defence ministry. “During this period of 40 months, why was the matter nor raised to the level of the raksha mantri (defence minister)?… It is incomprehensible that to implement a Supreme Court decision, the file moves within the same ministry for 40 months and the issue is not raised to the level of the minister concerned, in this case the hon’ble raksha mantri.”

The AFT commented: “Armed forces veterans in the twilight of their lives, cannot be made to wait indefinitely and illegally for their benefits under the pretext of procedure and inter-departmental consultation… This attitude is not acceptable and the department of ESW (ex-servicemen) has to change its attitude with respect to processing of veteran’s cases, which in this case are based on the judgment of the Supreme Court.”

The bench directed the Secretary, ministry of defence, to issue instructions to all concerned not to raise any objection for denying the relief to the eligible person by quoting the nonexistent clause. “In case they would do so, they shall be liable for contempt and cost, which shall be recoverable from the individual who illegally denies the legitimate dues by quoting a non-existent clause of the policy. These instructions shall also be put in the public domain with instructions for affected personnel to apply for such relief to the competent authority instead of directly approaching the courts/ AFTs,” the bench observed.