NO RECORDS OF ANY SURGICAL STRIKE BEFORE 2016, SAYS DGMO

NEW DELHI: The Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) of the Army does not have records of any “surgical strike” conducted before September 29, 2016.

Responding to an RTI application, the DGMO said a “surgical strike” was carried out on September 29, 2016.

“This section does not maintain records of any other surgical strikes, if any conducted earlier,” the reply said.

The RTI application with the defence ministry also sought the definition of the term “surgical strikes”.

The DGMO replied, “As per the information available in open source, the definition of surgical strike is ‘...an operation which is planned based on specific intelligence, on a legitimate military target for maximum effect and with minimum or no collateral damage. It involves deliberate insertion to target area, precise execution and swift extrication of the body of troops back to the base’.”

The application asked the ministry if the “surgical strike” mentioned in a DGMO statement of September 29, 2016, was the first ever in the country’s history.

It also wanted to know if the Army had carried out a “surgical strike” between 2004 and 2014.

The DGMO provided the responses which were forwarded to the petitioner by the IHQ (Army).

In a well calibrated operation, on the intervening night of September 28-29, the Indian Army moved across the LoC and smashed four launch pads that were under the guard of a Pakistani post located 700 metres from the LoC. Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) was severely hit in these cross-LoC surgical strikes.