India intensifies patrolling along LAC

Even as External Affairs Minister S M Krishna sought to play down fresh reports of Chinese incursions, the armed forces have intensified patrolling along the line of actual control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh and the entire area is expected to be brought under radar surveillance.

Though New Delhi is not perturbed over the reports of Chinese incursions, official sources said there was no question of India lowering its guard. In a brief interaction with the media outside his ministry, Krishna said there was an inbuilt mechanism between the two sides to deal with any border violations.

It is learnt that the two sides had held a border meeting in Ladakh in August at which the Indian officials took up this matter with the China while drawing up India’s own strategy to deal with any future violations. In the defence establishment, recent acts of China are being seen as attempts to provoke India.

Krishna’s statement this morning came as a surprise to the defence establishment, indicating differences between the Defence Ministry and the Foreign office over the Chinese incursions.

‘’Let me go on record to say that (border with China) has been one of the most peaceful boundaries that we have as compared to boundary lines with other countries,’’ Krishna said when his reaction was sought to incidents of China violating the Indian airspace and the LAC. Krishna did not agree with a suggestion that these incursions were a cause of concern.

Home Minister P Chidambaram had also told a television news channel that reports of Chinese incursions should not be overplayed and that talks were on between the two sides to resolve the boundary issue. Cross-border violation would continue until the boundary issue was settled for good.

Defence sources, however, pointed out that while Indian soldiers have been detained by China in the past for violation of LAC, the Indian stand in the matter is ambiguous. China has been applying intense pressure not only in Ladakh but also at the tri-junction of the India-China-Bhutan border near Bumla in Arunachal Pradesh.

Last year, there were as many as 223 Chinese incursions while nearly 75 border violations from the Chinese side have already taken place in the past three months.

However, officials say many of these incursions could be the result of difference in perceptions between the two sides on LAC. “India has proposed an early clarification and confirmation of the LAC…that, however, is awaited,’’ the officials said.

They pointed out that the two countries have put in place a mechanism to deal with any border transgression that comes to the notice of either side. The issue is settled either through meetings between border personnel of the two countries or at the level of diplomats.

The Special Representatives (SRs) of the two countries had met in New Delhi last month and decided to resolve the boundary dispute peacefully. Pending the settlement of the boundary issue, it was decided that the two sides would maintain peace and tranquility in border areas.

The officials pointed out that in fact the SRs for the first time went beyond their brief and discussed expansion of bilateral cooperation in areas such as trade and investment, defence, culture, education and people-to-people exchanges. They noted that India had issued nearly 58,000 business visas to Chinese nationals last year.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, who was until recently India’s envoy to Beijing, meanwhile, is said to be getting a regular update on the situation from Indian Ambassador to China S Jaishankar. The envoy is also reported to have brushed aside reports of conflict along the border as “sensational” and “alarmist”.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also today said the reports of yet another Chinese incursion into India were groundless. “Reports of any incursion into India are groundless and based on incidents which never happened.” Beijing said China sought a fair and mutually understandable solution through peaceful and friendly negotiations between the two sides. Attempts to get a response from the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi on the development, however, did not yield result.

Kaveri jet engine finally poised for first flight

After 20 years in the making, the Kaveri jet engine will finally take to the skies.

In 1989, Dr Mohana Rao, then a junior technician at the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), Bangalore, immersed himself in the ambitious Kaveri programme, which was designing a jet engine for the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft. After pushing the Kaveri through two decades of heartbreak and achievement, Dr Rao is now the Director of GTRE. And his baby, the Kaveri engine, is ready to fly.

This week, a fully built Kaveri engine will be transported to a testing facility outside Moscow called the Gromov Flight Research Institute. Here, a giant IL-76 aircraft will have one of its four engines replaced with a Kaveri. Russian and GTRE experts will then evaluate the Kaveri’s performance while the IL-76 flies.

Before the actual flight tests, Russian experts at Moscow’s Central Institute of Aviation Motors will run ground checks on the Kaveri’s performance, in conditions that simulate altitudes up to 15 kilometers (49,200 feet).

Business Standard visited the Kaveri ground test bed at GTRE, Bangalore, where Russian experts are finishing “pre-acceptance checks” on the Kaveri engine that is headed for their facilities in Russia. The giant turbofan engine, suspended from a ceiling bracket, was being revved up gradually. As it roared to a deafening crescendo, engineers monitored the Kaveri’s power output, watching carefully from behind a bullet-proof glass window.

“The Kaveri’s development is complete”, confirmed Dr Mohana Rao, “In ground testing at GTRE it met the performance parameters laid down in 1998. The next step is to confirm that it performs during flight. A 50-person GTRE team will travel with the engine to Moscow and participate in the flight trials over the next 3-4 months.”

India has no facilities for altitude-testing and flight-testing jet engines. GTRE estimates it will take several hundred crore rupees to create such test facilities in India. Meanwhile, each test campaign in Russia costs Rs 50-60 crores.

For the DRDO (GTRE is a DRDO laboratory) even a successful Kaveri flight will be a bittersweet end to one of India’s most savagely criticised development programmes. A measure of success, on the one hand, in an ambitious technological leapfrog to building a modern jet engine, something only a few countries can do. On the other hand, the Kaveri has failed to provide an engine for the Tejas, even after spending Rs 3000 crores.

“The reason was two-fold”, explains Mohana Rao. “The Kaveri turned out 15% heavier than we planned. From the planned 1100 kg, its final weight has gone up to 1265 kg.”

Meanwhile, the Tejas fighter also turned out heavier than planned, demanding a more powerful engine; the Kaveri’s maximum thrust of 65 Kilo Newtons (KN) is simply not enough. The air force has chosen American GE 404-IN engines, which produce 80 KN at full power, to power the first 20 Tejas fighters. And subsequent Tejas will get about 95 KN of thrust from a new-generation engine: the General Electric GE-414 and the Eurojet EJ200 engines are currently being evaluated.

But GTRE is undeterred, having produced a high-tech turbofan jet engine in a country that has never produced even a motorcycle or car engine.

“We need more thrust without increasing the size of the engine”, says Mohana Rao. “That means getting better technologies from a more experienced foreign partner. We have chosen (French aero-engine major) Snecma. The Defence Ministry has approved the tie-up.”

Business Standard has learned that Rolls Royce, and General Electric declined to partner GTRE, apparently unwilling to part with cutting-edge technology. US major, Pratt & Whitney, was willing only to provide consultancy. With only Russia’s NPO Saturn and Snecma in the game, the MoD has opted for Snecma.

More senior ranks for IPS in MP

The cadre strength of IPS officers in Madhya Pradesh is going to increase from 231 to 291.The number of senior duty posts which presently is 126 will go up to 158, in the wake of a recent cadre review. Number of all posts will go up barring the posts of DIGs.

12 new IG posts in RPF

The Railway Board has consented to create 12 posts of IGs. This will result in 12 DIG rank officers of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) to be elevated as IGs. This will cover DIGs of the RPF cadre from batches of 1981 to 1985.

Four Additional Secretaries of the R&AW object promotion and go on leave

There are reports that four Additional Secretaries of the R&AW belonging to 1973,1974 and 1975 batches have proceeded on protest leave against promotion of an officer .They say that seven officers have been superceded.

Sino-India border dispute hots up over use of multilateral institution

Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh), Sep.6 (ANI): A new twist has been introduced into the vexed land border dispute between India and China, with the latter trying to block a 2.9 billion dollar Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan to India on the grounds that part of the loan was destined for water projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the state that includes the disputed area of Tawang.

This is the first time that China has sought to influence the territorial dispute through a multilateral institution.

This move plus aggressive border violations byu China has prompted the Indian Army to deploy extra troops and fighter jets in the area as a counter measures.

According to the New York Times, one former Indian Air Force chief has declared China and not Pakistan as India’s biggest threat.

Perched above 10,000 feet in the icy reaches of the eastern Himalayas, Tawang is the biggest tinderbox in Sino-Indian relations. According to the NYT, in recent months, both countries have stepped up efforts to secure their rights over this rugged patch of land.

It is a conflict rooted in Chinese claims of sovereignty over all of historical Tibet. From India’s point of view, Tawang is an integral part of the country and to safeguard it, a huge Indian military buildup is on. Army trucks have been hauling howitzers along rutted mountain roads. Soldiers drill in muddy fields. Military bases appear every half-mile in the countryside, with watchtowers rising behind concertina wire.

With the border with China just 23 miles away; Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, 316 miles; and Beijing, 2,676 miles, the Indian side is of the view that with the PLA engaged in big deployment at the border, at Bumla, there is a necessity to do the same on its side of the border.

China and India did 52 billion dollars worth of trade last year, but businesspeople say border tensions have been infused with official interference, damping the willingness of Chinese and Indian companies to invest in each other’s countries.

The NYT quotes Ravi Bhoothalingam, a former president of the Oberoi Hotel Group and a member of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi, as saying: ” Officials start taking more time, scrutinizing things more carefully, and all that means more delays and ultimately more denials. That’s not good for business.”Tawang is a thickly forested area of white stupas and steep, terraced hillsides that is home to the Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism, speak a language similar to Tibetan and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa. The Sixth Dalai Lama was born here in the 17th century.

The Chinese Army occupied Tawang briefly in 1962, during a war with India fought over this and other territories along the 2,521-mile border. More than 3,100 Indian soldiers and 700 Chinese soldiers were killed and thousands wounded in the border war.

In some ways, Tawang has become a proxy battleground, too, between China and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetans, who passed through this valley when he fled into exile in India in 1959.

Last year, the Dalai Lama announced for the first time that Tawang is a part of India, bolstering the India’s territorial claims and infuriating China.

Few, however, expect China to try to annex Tawang by force, but military skirmishes are a real danger, analysts say.

The Indian Army has recorded 270 border violations and nearly 2,300 instances of “aggressive border patrolling” by Chinese soldiers last year.

According to Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, “The India-China frontier has become more ‘hot’ than the India-Pakistan border.”

“The China-India border has got to be one of the most continuously negotiated borders in modern history. That shows how intractable this dispute is,” said M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a leading expert on China’s borders. (ANI)

Bijapur: Operation Kanchan’ Ends in Tragedy - Body Retrieved from Borewell

Bijapur, Sep 7 (DHNS) : Four-year-old Kanchan’s battle for survival, against all-odds, in a 50-feet borewell, ended here on Sunday morning. Her lifeless, decomposed body was pulled out from the depths of the pit in an operation named after her.  

'Operation Kanchan’, undertaken to rescue Kanchan who had fallen into an open borewell in the afternoon of August 31concluded on Sunday morning. Brought out dead from the borewell, the body of Kanchan, who hails from Devar Nimbaragi village here, was  taken to Chadachan for autopsy and then handed over to her relatives.
The body was in a state of decomposition with only bits of flesh clinging to the skeleton. Kanchan was buried in her village cemetery.

Her relatives had lived these tortuous days between hope and despair. Some of them had  arrived when the operation to retrieve her body concluded. But recovering a decomposed body of a child after days of  hard labour was very painful for the soldiers involved in the rescue operation.

The rescue operation was one of the longest in the State undertaken to rescue children fallen into open bore wells. 

The body could be recovered after six complete days. It was the first time that the soldiers of the Maratha Light Infantry, of the Indian Army from Secunderabad, a team of experts from Hatti Gold Mines, the fire brigade  and the police and hundreds of villagers were involved in the operation.

Setbacks

The  work of the rescue  team suffered  setbacks due to intermittent rains. The toughest problem the teams encountered was the hard rock layer. It  was not possible to undertake a   big blast as it would have hit the bore well. The soldiers preferred to use smaller blasts to ensure the safety of the child.

Kanchan’s mother is in confinement as she had given birth to a male child just three days before the incident.  The woman refused to eat and went unconscious  often.  
Even though an order has been passed to close all unused bore wells, the district administration has failed in implementing it.

District in-charge Minister Govind Karjol said that from now onwards obtaining permission from competent authority would be made compulsory before drilling  bore wells so that necessary steps can be taken to close it in the event of the bore well becoming dysfunctional.

*  August 31: 12.30 pm: Kanchan falls into borewell;
4.30 pm: JCBs sent to the spot; operation begins
*  September 1: Soldiers from Maratha Light Infantry, and Military Engineering Service, Secunderabad, arrive. Rains, rocks hamper progress
*  September 2: Arrival of a team of experts from the Hutti Gold Mines. Heavy excavators, explosives used.
*  September 3: Operation progresses, no luck
*  September 4: Team succeeds in digging a 50-foot trench; foul smell emanating from the borewell
*  September 5: Team tries to dig a tunnel, but  rain and rocks hamper work
*  September 6: Kanchan’s body brought out of borewell 

Bhutan to take action on Indian rebel camps

NEW DELHI // Six years after Bhutan’s army cleared Indian separatist rebels from its territory with the help of the Indian army, the two countries are planning a similar operation against the same groups, which have regained their bases in the Himalayan kingdom, according to regional security experts.

Militant separatists have been operating in north-east India’s Assam and West Bengal states for decades, and have long taken advantage of the 699km-long unguarded border between India and Bhutan, building bases in the kingdom’s forests. At least two major Assamese separatist groups are known to be operating from bases in Bhutan’s jungles, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB).

Last month, the Indian home minister, P Chidambaram, during talks with the king of Bhutan, Jigme KN Wangchuck, on a three-day visit to the country, raised concerns about the re-entrenchment of Assamese and other north-eastern rebel groups in Bhutan.

“I sensitised the Bhutan government [on the Indian rebel camps] and the king has assured [he will] take suitable action,” Mr Chidambaram told reporters.

Although he did not give details on any forthcoming action, counter-insurgency experts believe a Bhutanese military operation to dislodge the rebels is imminent.

“Since Bhutan has agreed to take action, we can now expect a 2003-like operation, with India’s logistical and other support. Nothing less than a widespread and tough Bhutanese army crackdown, with active co-operation from the Indian army, can succeed to flush them out of Bhutan,” said Nani Gopal Mahanta, coordinator of Peace and Conflict Studies at Gauhati University in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city.

An Indian army major, who is engaged in counter-insurgency operations in Assam and is not allowed to speak to the media, said Bhutan would surely comply with New Delhi’s request and use its army to flush out the rebels, as it had done in 2003.

The separatist militants originally fled across the border in the early 1990s after Indian security forces launched the decade-long Operation Rhino to crush the Assamese nationalists. Many guerrillas decamped to southern Bhutan and remote areas of Bangladesh, to regroup and to plan attacks.

Others found sanctuary in Bhutan when Sheikh Hasina, during her first term as Bangladesh’s prime minister in the late 1990s, ordered the army at the behest of New Delhi to clear Indian rebel bases from her country’s remote border regions.

Pressure from New Delhi finally resulted in Bhutan’s Operation All Clear, in which forces led by the Royal Bhutan Army in 2003 smashed the rebel camps and drove more than 3,000 insurgents into India.

Some of the displaced rebels trickled back into Bangladesh and Myanmar, while others surrendered to Indian authorities.

While half a dozen separatist groups fight the Indian state for Assamese independence – and each other for control of the movement – the ULFA is considered the deadliest, having carried out more than a dozen terror attacks in north-east India over the past eight years. Indian authorities also suspect the group was behind 13 synchronised blasts in Assam last October 30, which killed more than 80 people.

Established in 1979, the ULFA seeks a separate homeland for ethnic Assamese and demands non-indigenous Hindi-speaking immigrants to leave the state. The ULFA’s core demand is a “sovereign, independent Assam”. It has agreed to give up arms if the union government meets this demand.

Over the past two years, both Myanmar and Bangladesh have stepped up operations to drive ULFA fighters out of their territory, leaving Bhutan as their last refuge, giving Indian authorities hope that the long-running insurgency may be losing force.

“Recently, with Burma and Bangladesh turning hostile, at least to some extent, some of the rebel groups have chosen Bhutan again as a safer base. If a tough action is mounted and the rebels are forced to flee Bhutan, we could see an increase in the number of rebels surrendering to India,” said Suresh Yadav, a battalion commander of India’s Border Security Force in West Bengal.

Quoting unnamed Indian intelligence sources, The Times of India last month reported that the ULFA and NDFB had been joined in their camps in southern Bhutan by the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), which poses a growing threat to the kingdom.

Pointing to a December incident in which Bhutanese Maoists ambushed an army patrol in south Bhutan, killing four of the forest guards, Bhutanese officials recently reported that the Indian rebel groups were preparing Bhutanese Maoists and other rebel groups for anti-state violence in Bhutan.

“[Bhutanese] anti-national groups like the Maoists, Bhutan Tiger Force and the Revolutionary Youth of Bhutan are receiving guerrilla, sabotage and other military training from the ULFA and Bodo militants,” said Bhutan’s joint secretary of the law and order bureau, Karma T Namgyal, adding that his country would act against the Indian rebels.

Indian military intelligence sources also told The Times of India that, in the planned operation, Indian forces, as they did in 2003, would stand guard on the Indian side of the border, while the Bhutanese army closed in on the rebels.