Pakistan-India border to be sealed by December 2018: Rajnath Singh

Indian home minister says a border security grid will be in place soon

The India-Pakistan border will be completely sealed by December, 2018, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Friday.

"This is time bound, it will be done by December, 2018. We are readying an action plan for that," Singh said after a meeting with chief and home ministers of Indian-held Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat which border Pakistan.



"A border security grid will be in place soon," he said, adding that the Indian government was also "looking at technological solutions to man the border."

The decision comes as tensions escalate between the neighbouring countries following India’s ‘surgical strike’ claims in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). The claims were taken with a pinch of salt even by international media.

Leading US newspaper, The Washington Post, in an article on Sunday published interviews of locals living along the Line of Control. The majority of villagers in the three areas along the LoC said that they did not witness any cross-border movement of troops or hear the sound of any helicopters.

 

The residents of Bhimber, Chamb and Sahmani said that a heavy exchange of fire did take place, although no one said that “they had seen or heard anything that supported India’s claim that it carried out cross-border strikes on several staging areas for militant groups that left “double digits” of militants dead,” according to the article.

Another well-reputed publication, The Diplomat, in a piece titled Is India Capable of a Surgical Strike in Pakistan Controlled Kashmir? raised some serious questions about the capabilities of the Indian military.

The article asked whether the Indian forces have the requisite capability for those much-hyped ‘surgical strikes’. The piece took a critical look into India’s defence system, stating that the majority of the acquired warfare mechanisms and machinery are along the ‘Cold War’ lines.



This article originally appeared on NDTV