Manohar Parrikar On Army's Last-Minute Purchases Before Surgical Strikes

Panaji: Before several teams of the Army's Special Forces carried out the surgical strikes across the Line of Control in September last year, the Modi government flew its top officers to foreign countries to make last-minute purchases of items necessary for the attacks, former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Saturday.

Mr Parrikar, who had stepped down from the defence ministry to return as Goa Chief Minister earlier this year, said the surgical strikes were planned and executed with such secrecy that the possibility of the strikes never got out till the army made the announcement.

"Even probably it (details about the strikes and the planning) has not come out even now. Including flying of some of the officers to some foreign capitals to make arrangements for. We had to send officers with authority to carry out the on-spot purchase as they call it," Mr Parrikar said at a literary event in Goa capital Panaji, according to news agency IANS.

India had carried out surgical strikes at seven terror launch pads across the Line of Control on the intervening night of September 28 and 29, 2016 with the Army inflicting significant casualties on terrorists who were preparing to infiltrate from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

The strikes had come within two weeks days of a terrorist attack on an Army camp in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir 10 days earlier which had claimed the lives of 19 jawans.

Between the Uri attack and surgical strikes, Mr Parrikar went on, he would have had about 18-19 meetings with top army officers and defence ministry officials.

"Nothing leaked out," he said.

"In fact, all the surgical strikes were planned with mobiles 20 metres away. Not only they were put off, but they were kept 20 metres away, so that nothing leaks," he said.

Mr Parrikar also spoke about the "continuous stress" that he had gone through during those days.
"I virtually didn't sleep, because the pressure was on me, if something goes wrong. It is very easy to clap afterwards," he said.

A top army commander had recently told NDTV how the army had a contingency plan if the audacious plan to engage multiple targets on either side of the Pir Panjal range went south.

Helicopter units were on standby for extremely risky casualty evacuation missions. "Multiple plans were made... in case there was a fighting extrication, how would it actually be carried out - what assets would be required for such a contingency - whether in terms of aerial assets or whether in terms of even sending some more people across to bring our people back so that kind of planning had been put in process and we were conscious that there could be a fighting extrication," Lieutenant General DS Hooda (Retd), who was the Northern Army Commander last year, told NDTV recently.