Gen Rawat asks tri-services to curb peace-time activities in deference to deployed troops in Ladakh

Marine commandos have been asked to be deployed with Army’s special forces in Ladakh and Navy asked to focus on Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Updated on: Oct 26, 2020, 09:48:40 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Indians to light a “diya (lamp)” for soldiers deployed on Ladakh borders, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen Bipin Rawat has asked the three services to curb all peace-time activities in deference to deployed troops and be ready in case of a worst case scenario.

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen Bipin Rawat has asked the three services to curb all peace-time activities. (Twitter/@proudhampur)

It is understood that Navy’s marine commandos have been asked to be deployed in East Ladakh where the Indian Army is locked in a stand-off with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at Gogra-Hot Springs and both banks of Pangong Tso lake. The MARCOS will be deployed with the Indian Special Forces to gain experience in polar desert conditions with high wind chill factor and heavy snow.

The deployed troops are waiting for last shipment of polar winter clothing and face masks, which are expected to arrive from US Army own reserve stocks by the first week of November. Just like the PLA, the Indian Army is prepared for a long haul and is in no mood to cede an inch of territory to the aggressive Chinese Army. The PLA has already deployed strategic jammers in Arunachal Pradesh and is going in for a massive infrastructure and storage capacity upgrade in both Xinjiang and Tibet.

According to senior military commanders, Gen Rawat has made it clear to all the three services that these are not normal times with troops, artillery and tanks deployed along the 1597 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh and hence all peace-time activities must be curbed. “As situation in east Ladakh can get worse any time in case of an accident, the armed forces must be ready for any scenario. It cannot be that while the entire northern army command and western air command is battle deployed in frozen condition, the rest of us are celebrating the festival season and playing golf. Let nobody forget there is a war on in Ladakh,” said a South Block official.

In lieu of this, the Indian Navy has been asked to focus on Andaman and Nicobar Island to monitor Chinese warship activity in Indian Ocean rather than get concerned about PLA Navy deployments off the coast of Africa. Indian Island territories of Lakshadweep and ANC are the key to national maritime security as they dominate the most important shipping lanes - from Persian Gulf to Malacca Straits—in the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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