Army Chief hints at action against Pakistan for beheadings

New Delhi: India’s Army Chief indirectly hinted on Thursday that retaliatory action against Pakistan for the beheading of two Indian jawans in Kashmir may be in the offing, but only said the Indian Army doesn’t reveal its plans before executing them.

Skirting a volley of questions from reporters on whether and when the Army would respond, Gen. Bipin Rawat said future plans are not talked about and are shared only after their execution. “We don’t talk about future plans beforehand. We share details after execution,” Gen. Rawat said after attending a book release organised by the United Services Institution, a defence think tank.

In a barbaric act on Monday, a Pakistani border action team sneaked in about 250 meters into the Indian side of the Line of Control under heavy mortar fire cover in the Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch and beheaded two Indian jawans after they were killed in a planned ambush.

On Wednesday, Gen. Rawat’s deputy, Army vice-chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Chand, had said: “I do not want to say what we will do. Instead of speaking, we will focus on our action at a time and place of our choosing.”

Expressing regret over the insufficient funds allotted to meet India’s defence needs, Gen. Rawat said in his USI address: “There is a general thinking among some people that expenditure on defence is a burden... but we need to appreciate that defence and economy go hand in hand. It is only a strong military that will help you in ensuring stability along your borders and within the nation and the hinterland and that will help you develop your economy ... while we are developing our economy, the military is not getting its due share.”

India’s three armed services have been demanding more military hardware, including small arms systems and howitzers for the Army, helicopters and submarines for the Navy and fighter aircraft for the Air Force for a long time, in addition to a lot of other vital equipment.

Interestingly, Gen. Rawat referred to China’s growth path to development, which “should be emulated”. He said: “I think here we need to draw a lesson from China’s modernisation since 1978. While they were looking at developing the economy, development of the military was a part of modernisation. Therefore, for realisation of true national power, these two must go hand in hand.”

For 2017-18, India’s defence budget was Rs 2.74 lakh crores, or 1.63 per cent of GDP, while China allocated three per cent of its GDP on this head. China is also pursuing a vigorous military modernisation and restructuring effort, with the aim of making the world’s biggest armed forces “mean and lean”.

Talking on deficits in formulating a national military and security strategy, Gen. Rawat said India should try to claim its rightful place in the UN Security Council. He advocated “creating alliances and creating friends so that we find our rightful place in the United Nations in the Security Council. The time has come for India to have a say in all that happens in the UN”.