STEEL IN OUR SPINE
NDA | ESTABLISHED IN 1954
THE BATTLE PLAN
In 1941, Lord Linlithgow, then Viceroy of India, received £100,000 in gift from the Sudanese government for the sacrifices of Indian troops in the liberation of Sudan in the second world war. As the war ended, on May 2, 1945, a committee headed by then Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck was set up to examine the feasibility of forming an institution for training officers of the armed forces jointly. A report it sumbitted in December 1946 recommended a Joint Services Military Academy. Post-Independence, the Chiefs of Staff Committee immediately began to implement the recommendations, initiating action to commission a permanent defence academy and searching for a suitable site. Following partition, £30,000 from Sudan’s monetary gift went to Pakistan. The Indian Army decided to use these funds to partly cover the cost of the construction of the National Defence Academy. Jawaharlal Nehru laid its foundation on October 6, 1949 and it was formally commissioned on December 7, 1954. The first batch of 190 cadets started training on January 11, 1949. Currently, NDA trains over 300 cadets every year. The academy recently procured some 300 tablets for cadets doing a BTech and for naval cadets in the fifth and sixth terms.