Task force to review Kargil panel proposals

PMO unhappy over inordinate delay

Reacting to the constitution of the task force, former director of IB Arun Bhagat said the Prime Minster’s Office “is not happy at all” about the inordinate delay in implementing the crucial recommendations.

“I suppose the PMO is not happy at all. Setting up the task force would serve dual purpose including that of finding out reasons for non-implementations of the measures,” Bhagat told Deccan Herald.

A 14-member task force headed by former cabinet  secretary Naresh Chandra would examine the distance covered by the various government departments, security and defence establishments in translating the KRC report by late security strategist K Sumbrahmanyam and the recommendations of the Group of Ministers formed soon after the 1999 Indo-Pak conflict.

The committee is to commence work from July 14 and submit its report to the government in six months. The KRC recommended wide-ranging alterations from military to intelligence, border management to defence budgeting and overall modernisation of forces.

Exactly 10 years after the purported intelligence failure led to Pakistan army taking control of the Kargil heights,  the implementation of the KRC recommendations has only been in its bits and pieces. The KRC report is seen by many to be the first ever major attempt since 1947 to overhaul country’s rather old-fashioned defence and security system.

“The political, bureaucratic, military and intelligence establishments appear to have developed a vested interest in the status quo,” KRC’s observations then seem to have been prophetic in view of its dogged non-implementation a decade later.

Former deputy national security advisor and ex-high commissioner to Pakistan Satish Chandra, however, clarified that the task force was not to oversee only KRC recommendations. He said the task force  “will mainly focus” on the implementation of the recommendations of the GoM report with KRC being only small part of it.

The Naresh Chandra task force is expected to take care of newer realities in defence including the changing tactics of China along the Arunachal borders and her extended influence in the South Asian region including Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.