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| Army was 'reluctant' to tell govt about Kargil: Tipnis | | |
New Delhi, Oct 7 The army was "reluctant" to inform the government about the presence of Pakistan-backed intruders in Kargil in early 1999 and did little initially to jointly plan and carry out operations to evict them, Air Chief Marshal (retired) A Y Tipnis has said.
The army top brass kept saying they could handle the situation but insisted the Indian Air Force should provide helicopter gunships to support ground troops -- a request Tipnis turned down several times as he felt helicopters would be vulnerable to missile attacks and the use of air power would lead to an escalation.
"I observed that the ground situation was grave. Army required air force help to evict the intruders. Army Headquarters was reluctant, possibly because it was embarrassed to have allowed the present situation to develop, to reveal the full gravity of the situation to (the Ministry of Defence)," Tipnis says in a signed article in the latest issue of Force, a leading defence publication.
"Thus it (army) was not amenable to Air Headquarters' position to seek government approval for use of air power offensively," writes Tipnis, who headed the IAF during the Kargil conflict.
At two meetings of the three service chiefs on May 23 and May 24, 1999, then army chief Gen Ved Malik "appeared to get agitated" on the reluctance to use helicopters.
At the second meeting, when Tipnis indicated helicopters would not be deployed without government approval, he writes that Malik "stormed out"of the room, saying, "If that's the way you want it, I will go it alone." Malik was not immediately available for comments.
The IAF went into action on May 26, 1999 after its deployment was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security. |
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