From Jal Khambata
NEW DELHI: The Subrahmanyam panel that starts an inquiry from Friday into any Indian lapses in detection of the Pakistan Army’s intrusion in Kargil sector may censor the Defence Ministry bureaucrats sitting tight for 15 years over an Indian Army proposal for protecting the Himalayan borders.
The proposal was mooted by the Army Headquarters in 1984 to raise a specialised "Alpine Brigade" following an inquiry into the lapses that resulted in death of nearly 400 Army personnel in the Siachen operation.
The recommendation for a separate brigade had come from Lt General M L Chibbar, chief of the northern command, following his inquiry that revealed how the soldiers rushed to Siachen glacier to repulse the Pakistani attack were neither acclimatised for surviving in the ice-cold climate nor trained in mountaineering nor equipped with snow boots, cloths and protective tents nor had the equipment fit for use in the rarefied atmosphere at the high altitude.
The report had noted how a score of the Indian Army personnel had become victims even without being hit by the enemy bullets as the troops rushed there had problems like frost bite, snow blindness, chill blaze and mountain sickness since they were not aclimatised. The Indian Army has given details of all these ailments that the soldiers face on the high altitude of the Himalayas in a website (www.vijayinkargil.org) set up by it on the internet.
The Army sources point out that all these problems were faced by the troops rushed to Kargil under "Operation Vijay" just because the Army did not have the specialised force recommended by it after the Siachen experience.
Had the IAS bureaucrats sitting in the Defence Ministry not blocked the proposal, the Indian Army would have got the force guarding the Line of Control round-the-year and that itself would have prevented the Kargil intrusion, the sources affirmed.
These facts would be brought to light before the 4-member committee headed by noted defence expert K Subrahmanyam since its terms of reference are quite wide to cover all aspects by being empowered to "review all events leading tthe intrusion," the sources added.
It may be interesting to note that Subrahmanyam is investigating the second major national security lapse of the country as he had also probed the lapses in the war with China in 1962 when he was with the Defence Ministry as a deputy secretary. END.
