PM to address military leadership in March
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the country’s military leadership at a conference of the armed forces likely to be held in March in Gujarat, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The Combined Commanders’ Conference will be held at Gujarat’s Kevadia, the people said, adding that the exact dates were being worked out.
In a break from tradition, the last four editions of the conference were held outside Delhi — on India’s solitary aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, at the Indian Military Academy, in Dehradun, and in Jodhpur.
The conference will be held at a time when India and China are in the midst of a disengagement process in eastern Ladakh, and the military is putting finishing touches to its theaterisation plan for the advantageous utilisation of its resources to address growing security threats.
The defence minister, the chief of defence staff and the three service chiefs will attend the conference.
The military is expected to make a presentation to the PM on the progress made towards the creation of theatre commands, one of the people cited above said.
India is set to begin a formal roll-out of its long-awaited theaterisation plan, with the Air Defence Command and the Maritime Theatre Command set to be launched by May, as reported by HT on Wednesday.
The commands are being set up in the backdrop of border tensions with China on the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh and Pakistani hostility along the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir, with a joint threat from the two nucleararmed neighbours being acknowledged as a reality by the country’s military leadership.