Updated: October 8, 2020 7:13:18 am
The joint April-May report did not mention Chinese aggression, but did point to the crisis across LAC without going into detail. (Twitter / Rajnath Singh)
After removing a monthly report that spoke of China’s “unilateral aggression” in Ladakh, the Defense Ministry has removed all monthly reports from its website since 2017.
These include those related to the period of the Doklam crisis in 2017, which had not mentioned the clash between Indian and Chinese troops.
The Ministry of Defense did not respond to inquiries from The Indian Express about the removal of the Defense Department’s monthly reports, but Ministry sources said previous reports will be back on the website “soon”, “probably in October” . .
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Sources indicated that the internal mechanism to prepare and share it publicly is being cleaned up to make them more “comprehensive” instead of being a list of updates received from each branch of the Ministry.
Each report, the sources said, goes through senior officials before being made public. These reports are generally silent on major operations, eg Balakot airstrike, India-Pakistan dogfight, Doklam deployment.
Before all the monthly reports since 2017 were removed, the previous ones were never available on the website, the Ministry had withdrawn the June 2020 report in August.
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That report said: “Chinese aggression has increased throughout LAC and more particularly in the Galwan Valley since May 5, 2020” and “the Chinese side transgressed in the areas of Kugrang Nala, Gogra and the north bank of the Pangong Tso Lake on May 17-18, 2020 ”.
He mentioned the June 15 clashes in the Galwan Valley and claimed that senior military officials were in talks. He warned that “while military and diplomatic engagement and dialogue continue to reach a mutually acceptable consensus, the current confrontation is likely to continue.”
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The joint April-May report did not mention Chinese aggression, but did point to the crisis across LAC without going into detail.
In reports since August 2019, there were four mentions of China: a meeting of the “India-China Joint Working Group” on August 13-14, 2019; “The Joint Army Exercise ‘Hand in Hand’ between the Indian Army and the PLA, China was held from 7 to 20 December 2019 in Umroi Cantt, Meghalaya”; the February 5, 2020 sighting of a Chinese warship, Jiangwei-Il, in Pakistani waters not far from Porbandar; and the March 2020 report on the BRO’s construction of a Bailey Bridge “to meet strategic requirements and ensure connectivity with 451 villages in the Upper Subansiri district, bordering China.”
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