Waking up to the massive infrastructure building on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India has now decided to seek sanction for the construction of 14 strategic rail links along the norther border. The sanction will have to come from the Planning Commission as the project will involve railway ministry. China presently has a superb rail and road infrastructure right up to the Indo-China border. In 2009 it has demonstrated its excellent mobility by conducting an exercise where about 50,000 troops moved from interior regions to the border crossing the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).
The decision was taken during the meeting of Defence Minister AK Antony with Army Chief General VK Singh today, the third in the series of meeting concentrating on the capital acquisition for the force.
To boost the "infrastructure development" in the Northern border areas, a euphemism for Indo-Chinese border, the Defence Ministry has decided to constitute an empowered committee headed by the Defence Secretary to look into the projects going on in the Northern regions and give recommendations to fast-track them. The Defence Ministry has also written to the Finance Ministry to increase the sanctioned strength of the Military Engineering Services (MES) to expedite the projects.
Also the third element to bulwark its defence against the Defence Minister reviewed the procurement of the 155mm 39 calibre Ultra Light Howitzers to be deployed in mountainous region along the Chinese border in detail. Trials have been completed for the Ultra Light Howitzers that India has decided to acquire from the US under government to government sales (Foreign Military Sales) route. The measures to add more punch to the Army's firepower like acquisition of Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher (MBRL) and one more regiment of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was also reviewed. In both the cases the price negotiation with the vendor have been concluded.
(UPDATE: Coupled with this the Defence Ministry has decided to
constitute an empowered committee, on the lines of the committee looking after
the procurement for the troops deployed in Siachen Glacier, to procure weapons
and other material for the Special Frontier Force (SFF) - a covert force raised to operate in the north-east.
The Committee will be headed by the Vice Chief of Army Staff.
Also in view of the long-pending demand from the Army to
have a “mini- air force” of their own with combat aviation assets, the Defence
Ministry set up another committee comprising of representatives from both Army
and the Air Force to study the current practices followed by the professional
armies across the world.)
Considering that the government still has to "seek sanction" for this rail road at LAC, it will be another few decades before this dream becomes a reality.
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