Posthumous Republic Day honour for Galwan Valley bravehearts

NEW DELHI: At its peak, the violent clash involved more than 600 rival soldiers with a majority of casualties on both sides caused by hypothermia with soldiers being pushed of the cliff into the freezing Galwan river.

Although the PLA has not disclosed the number of its dead, Indian Army estimates based on intelligence and communication intercepts on that day indicate that at least 50 Chinese soldiers, including the Commanding Officer of the battalion involved in skirmish, had died.

At least two Indian Army officers, including Colonel B Santosh Babu of the 16 Bihar battalion, and three troopers who died in a violent skirmish with the People ‘s Liberation Army (PLA) of China in Eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020, will be posthumously honoured with gallantry medals on Republic Day, people familiar with the matter said.

While the defence ministry and the Indian Army are tightlipped about the number of medals that will be awarded, Hindustan Times learns that at least five soldiers who gallantly fought Chinese aggression in Galwan will be honoured.

Indian soldiers retaliated in full measure when Chinese troops, which refused to withdraw from a location near Patrolling Point 14 in line with an agreement reached between the two countries, triggered the clash that left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead; the scrap also resulted in an unspecified number of Chinese casualties.

PLA troops had come prepared with clubs wrapped with barbed-wire and spears.Indian soldiers were overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but managed to evict the Chinese soldiers in a seven-hour skirmish along the LAC, the first such incident in at least five decades.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who travelled to Ladakh soon after, paid glowing tributes to the soldiers on the frontlines of a military standoff with China.

“Bharat Mata’s enemies have seen your fire and fury,” PM Modi said on the visit that saw him delivering a sharp reminder to China that the “era of expansionism” was over.

NEW DELHI: India has decided to go ahead with a truncated parade to mark Republic Day without a chief guest. The decision was taken after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s last-minute decision to cancel his visit due to the spread of a mutant strain of the virus that causes Covid-19 in the UK.

This will be the first time in at least five decades that the Republic Day celebrations, seen as a high point in India’s diplomatic calendar, will not have a chief guest. The last time the parade did not have a chief guest was In 1966 when Indira Gandhi was sworn in as PM on January 24 after the demise of PM Lal Bahadur Shastri on January 11. There were two other years when the parade did not have a chief guest: 1952 and 1953.

“We did not want to put any foreign dignitary in an awkward situation,” the official said.

The parade will be shorter and end at National Stadium in the national capital Delhi rather than the Red Fort.