Indo-Pak DGMOs hold talks

With increasing incidents of firing along the India-Pakistan border, the director general of military operations (DGMO) of India and Pakistan armies spoke on the hotline on Tuesday and agreed to take action to cool down the temperature in border areas.

The 10-minute conversation between Lt Gen P R Kumar and his Pakistani counterpart Maj Gen Sartaz Choudhary was cordial. The two senior officers agreed to hold flag meetings to improve the situation on the ground, said an Army official.

It has been decided that such flag meetings would be held between the two armies along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and between the Border Security Force (BSF) and Pakistan Rangers in the vicinity of the international border in the Jammu region.Heaviest firing

In a television interview, BSF Director-General D K Pathak said, “It is the heaviest cross border firing since the 1971 war.” But neither Pathak nor the BSF spokesperson in Delhi could not give any figure to substantiate the claim.

Across the 740-km-long LoC manned by the Army, there have been 96 incidents of ceasefire violations till August 25. The trend is similar to what was observed in 2013 when there were 347 cases of ceasefire violations in Jammu and Kashmir – 199 across the LoC and the rest along the international border manned by the BSF.

Hours after the telephonic conversation, the three service chiefs met Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to brief them on the border situation. The meeting continued for more than an hour.