The Parliament Standing Committee on Defence will visit the line of Actual Control (lAC) with China in the North East, including Arunachal Pradesh, for six days, starting from Saturday. It will review border management and operational preparedness of the armed forces.
The visit comes in the wake of a Chinese incursion into ladakh that led to a stand-off for more than 20 days earlier this month.
During the impasse, the Standing Committee had expressed serious concern over the Chinese managing to come in 19 km and pitch tents in Depsang Valley of ladakh. It asked the Defence Ministry to explain how the Chinese came in without detection, the possibility of an intelligence failure and steps taken to shore up defences there.
Top Defence Ministry officials appeared before the Standing Committee in April last week but the parliamentary panel was not satisfied with the Government’s explanation and asked officials to come back with full details. However, before the next presentation could be given, the face-off ended on May 5, with China withdrawing its troops to their positions across the lAC.
In this backdrop, the parliamentarians will take stock of steps taken to avoid another ladakh-type incident, officials said on Friday, adding that the panel will visit Nathu la in Sikkim and Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. Tawang is strategically important as it is very close to the lAC and saw the 1962 war with China.
The last long face-off between Chinese and Indian armies took place in 1987, in Sikkim region, when the Chinese intruded into India and refused to go back. After the initial parleys failed to resolve the situation, the Indian Army rushed more troops who surrounded the intruding Chinese and forcing them to retreat across the lAC.
As regards the visit, officials said local commanders would brief MPs about patterns of deployment of troops in Nathu la and Tawang, status of infrastructure — including roads and airfields — cooperation with other agencies to maintain vigil in accessible areas and measures
adopted for gathering real-time intelligence.
Tawang has no road connectivity and it takes three days on foot from the nearest road head to reach forward posts which are maintained by air. Given inclement weather most months of the year, it is a difficult task to land helicopters there to provide food and other logistical support.
‘Global sanctions setback to lCA project’
Two days after Defence Minister AK Antony expressed concern over slippages and delay in strategic weapons programmes like Tejas light combat aircraft (lCA) undertaken by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), its outgoing chief VK Saraswat attributed the delay to “setbacks” caused by international sanctions.
Besides sanctions, Saraswat, who retired on Friday, also blamed inadequate development of aerospace industry in the country. He added that DRDO had to start from the “scratch” to indigenously develop fighter aircraft as manufacturing base in the country was non-existent.
“We had to go through rigours of development from the scratch where we had to develop the whole range of products. This is not a problem in foreign countries where everything is available whereas we had to develop everything,” he said when asked to explain the delay in the lCA programme.
Saraswat noted that the project to develop a lCA was initiated in early 1980s but soon after Missile Transfer Control Regime (MTCR) came into effect in 1988. “All suppliers cancelled their agreements and European firms also stopped cooperation. When such a situation occurred, we had to do everything ourselves. This was a major setback,” he said. He further said that this situation continued from 1980 till 2000 when the first aircraft was rolled out, he said.
DRDO chief said lCA was first programme wherein a fighter plane had to be completely designed and developed indigenously in the country. He also said at that point of time India did not have any industrial base for avionics as development of a fighter jet was not a consideration till 1980.
lCA is expected to cost around Rs 200 crore per piece, which will still be much less than a foreign fighter of same class, Saraswat said. The IAF has placed an order for two squadrons (50 jets) besides one squadron for the Navy.