Kautilya

While speaking about possible action in PoK, Rawat said: “The Army’s 15 Corps performs war games and it is not only on defending land. Some of them would involve going across. Even 14 Corps does such war games. So, there are plans.”The Srinagar-based 15 Corps, besides being largely involved in counter-terrorist operations, has operational tasks against India’s western neighbour. The 14 Corps, based in Leh, is involved in operations not only on the western front, but on the eastern one with China as well.

Underlining the need to reduce dependency on arms imports, Defence Minister said several steps have been taken under the Make in India initiative to make the country a major defence manufacturing hub and net defence exporter. The government would not hesitate to initiate more measures, if required, he added.

In a joint investigation by the Narcotics Control Bureau and the local police, it was revealed that suspicious substance in the gunny bags was ketamine, a psychotrophic substance, and there were 1,160 packets of 1 kg each worth Rs 300 crore in the international market, they said. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated the Coast Guard for apprehending the ship.

“The first P17A frigate ‘Nilgiri’ will be launched on September 28. Since, it is named after the previous frigate which was part of a series of six ships, so the remaining names will also follow till the sixth ship,” said Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar, the vice chief of the Navy. “For the seventh frigate, we have identified one more in the series — ‘Mahendragiri’,” he said.

The Army’s new concept of offensive operations is a combination of ‘cold start’ — the ability to launch quick strikes across the International Border (IB) without prior warning by moving rapidly to battle positions from the cantonments — and the employment of ‘integrated batt le groups’. IBGs are offensive forces usually formed at divisional level to penetrate across the IB over a wide front but not necessarily strike too deeply.