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Government blames UF regime for defensive lapse

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

With the Opposition alleging that defensive lapses were the root cause of the Kargil conflict, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government is preparing the ground for its predecessors to share the blame.

Top defence ministry officials told rediff.com on condition of anonymity that the government had decided to come out with the truth about the causes of the conflict.

According to these officials, when the United Front government led by H D Deve Gowda was in power, India and Pakistan reached an agreement that their troops would not man the high positions along the Line of Control in the Kargil sector during the winter months. The successor UF government of Inder Kumar Gujral endorsed this agreement. The reasoning was that heavy snowfall in these areas makes it almost impossible for the troops to stay there in any case.

The officials pointed out that this was not the first time Pakistani forces had sneaked onto Tiger Hill, Tololing Ridge, and other peaks in the Kargil sector. Earlier too, they had sneaked into these areas and built makeshift bunkers, which eventually took concrete shape.

Taking advantage of the Indians' trust, the Pakistanis sneaked into the areas again last November. Thereafter, they began providing guidance through radio transmitters to the artillery guns in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. This is why the intruders were reluctant to abandon the high positions on the Indian side of the LoC.

But the officials stressed that the conflict had taught India some valuable lessons.

1. From now on, any peace overtures by Pakistan will be taken with a handful of salt. Indian troops will remain in a state of high alert all along the LoC at all times.

2. Round-the-clock security will be provided for the Srinagar-Leh highway.

3. In diplomatic terms, India has succeeded in making the world acknowledge Kashmir as a bilateral problem to be resolved by New Delhi and Islamabad without third-party mediation.

4. The battle-readiness of the Indian armed forces has been tested anew with good results. There had been speculation in some quarters that the fighting capacity of the forces had not been tested for nearly three decades, with the last war having taken place way back in 1971.

5. Lastly, Indian defence expenditure is bound to increase. Already, New Delhi has sent experts to various countries to shop for military hardware.

   The Kargil Crisis

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