PM Modi to address top military brass in Gujarat in March

The conference was traditionally held in Delhi but has been organised outside the national capital during the last five years. In the past, it has been held on India’s solitary aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, and Jodhpur.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the country’s military’s leadership at a top conference of the armed forces to be held in Gujarat in March, people familiar with developments said on Wednesday. The Combined Commanders' Conference will be held at Kevadia in early March though the exact dates are still being worked out, they said.

The military is expected to make a presentation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the progress made towards the creation of theatre commands. (TWITTER/@narendramodi).

The conference was traditionally held in Delhi but has been organised outside the national capital during the last five years. In the past, it has been held on India’s solitary aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, and Jodhpur.

The top conference will be held at a time when India and China are in the midst of a disengagement process in eastern Ladakh, and the military is putting finishing touches to its theaterisation plan for the most advantageous utilisation of its resources to address growing security threats. The defence minister, the chief of defence staff and the three service chiefs will attend the conference.

India is set to begin a formal roll-out of its long-awaited theaterisation plan, with the Air Defence Command and the Maritime Theatre Command set to be launched by May, as reported by Hindustan Times on Wednesday.

The commands are being set up in the backdrop of border tensions with China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh and Pakistani hostility along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, with a joint threat from the two nuclear-armed neighbours being acknowledged as a reality by the country’s military leadership, and at a time when India is demonstrating a muscular stance in the Indo-Pacific region.