NEW DELHI: An outfit of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) responsible for air intelligence in border areas is most likely to be axed for its surveillance failure in Kargil, notwithstanding the Government's repeated claim of no intelligence failure.

The Air Reconnaissance Centre (ARC), which is one of the four wings of the external intelligence agency RAW, is most likely to be disbanded and merged into the Indian Air Force (IAF) as its functioning under RAW has been found far from being satisfactory, according to a highly placed source in the government.

It was found lacking in not keeping track of the armed intrusions in the Kargil sector of Jammu and Kashmir despite having powerful radar systems and surveillance aircraft available with it to keep track of the enemy's flights and movements. ARC also did not use the satellites which are now available to it, though in a limited way.

A top secret inquiry conducted by the Government is believed to have blamed ARC for never bothering to operate its radars during the winter when the enemy troops sneaked in to capture the Indian heights.

A group of ministers are now seized with a recommendation to hand over the air intelligence to the IAF by merging ARC into it and transfer the Radio Research Centre (RRC), manned by ARC, to the Department of Space.

ANTI-RAW ? : Officers of the Research and Analysis Services (RAS) cadre are panicky from the development as they fear the ARC, which has a whopping budget of Rs 350 crores, was being made a scapegoat as a part of attempts being made by the IAS and IPS cadre officers to cripple RAW.

The murmur has already begun in the cadre that the Vajpayee Government has been also systematically undermining the external intelligence agency as witnessed by thrusting on them Ajit Singh Daulat, an IPS officer with no external intelligence experience as their chief early this month.

Disbanding of ARC may be only the beginning of the "slow closure" or the RAW itself, they fear as they cite several instances where ARC had otherwise earned laurels not only from the Government but also from the international intelligence for and yet just one Kargil fiasco has been mounted to finish it off. They point out how accurate were the ARC inputs that helped the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) to land precisely close to the enemy positions during the Sri Lanka operation.

Headed by a Principal Director and headquartered in the residential colony of Mayur Vihar in east Delhi, the ARC has around 50 highly qualified technical hands and some 200 other personnel posted in the border states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and the NorthEast to gather intelligence from across the borders. Its main operation centre is at Charbatia in Orissa.

ARC is closely conncected with the Department of Space and Oceanography for the satellite surveillance while it coordinates with the Border Security Force (BSF) in exchange of the intelligence reports to tally information both gather and then pass it on to the Defence Ministry and other Government agencies.

FOREIGN POSTINGS: A fear has also gripped the RAW personnel that the next move of the government may be to withdraw the RAS cadre officers posted in 18 world capitals and post in their place the IPS cadre officers drawn from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is the internal intelligence agency of the country.

Since the new RAW chief, Daulat, comes with the IB background of several years, he may prefer to choose those who had worked with him in the IB instead of relying upon RAW's own cadre of RAS, the officers point out. They have a reason to fear so since they point out that the appointment of Daulat to the top post has itself given a goodbye to the practice so far to select only someone who had at least three years of stint in either Washington or London so as to have the necessary exposure to the world-class gathering of intelligence.

The RAW officers' fear also comes from the background of 1977 when the Morarji Desai Government had withdrawn all RAW officers from various world capitals. They point out that Atal Bihari Vajpayee as then foreign minister was party to the decisions of what was feared at that time to be the gradual closure of the agency.

Return of Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister, however, saw RAW re-establishing itself under the aggressive personalities like Garry Saxena and K Sankaran Nair who headed the agency as its secretaries.

The agency again saw its downfall during the V P Singh Government when Jaswant Singh, who is now the External Affairs Minister, had reportedly recommended closure of RAW in his capacity as head of the Parliament Estimate Committee which examined the tasks of RAW in detail. The return of the Congress to power in 1991, however, stopped the axe, but the repeated attempts to crack the agency had its effect as it lost its punch and many RAW personnel have been slowly opting out to join departments of Space, Science and Electronics. END.