At least 134 highly trained commandos will be despatched in two batches beginning this month for protection of Border Roads Organisation personnel constructing a crucial highway in Afghanistan, sources told PTI in New Delhi on Sunday.
Delhi Police has given permission to the farmers to hold their 'Kisan Mazdoor Mahapanchayat' with the condition of gathering not exceeding to 5,000, no tractor trolleys, no march at the Ramlila Maidan, and made elaborate security arrangements that may lead to a heavy traffic jam in the national capital on March 14, officials on Wednesday said.
The labourers have been trapped since Sunday morning when a part of the tunnel collapsed following a landslide.
Ahead of farmers' 'Delhi Chalo March', the Delhi Police has intensified security arrangements at Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri borders and installed nails along with barricades to prevent vehicles carrying protesters from entering the city, officials said on Sunday.
The closure of the only road link resulted in increase in the prices of essential commodities and shortage of LPG and other items.
The Jammu-Srinagar national highway was reopened for one way traffic after overnight heavy snowfall had blocked it.
Stepping up relief and rescue operations in Uttarakhand, the Union defence ministry has deployed more than 45 choppers belonging to the Army and the Indian Air Force there along with more than 10,000 troops in the rain-ravaged parts of the hill state.
Assessing the unprecedented destruction at rain-ravaged Uttarakhand, including 110 major landslides in small stretches, the Border Roads Organisation has taken a massive road rehabilitation programme in the state, pressing into service about 4,000 men.
Was Border Roads Organisation commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Ajay Verma killed by militants because he did not pay heed to their demands and the government failed to provide him adequate security?Verma had written two letters to the district administration and police in Kishtwar about threats from militants and also demanded security cover for the men of the organisation, official sources told PTI. But the state failed to provide them security.
A massive landslide triggered by torrential rains at Somroli in Udhampur, 275 km from Srinagar, blocked the arterial road in the morning, the police said.
The PLA said the move has 'seriously damaged' border peace and tranquillity.
The captain and six crew of the Iran-bound ship have been detained and questioned by authorities to ascertain how the explosives went missing after the vessel had set sail from Mumbai on December 22.
A group of Naxalites killed two persons and damaged an abandoned police camp in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, police said on Saturday.
"One BRO personnel from the team is still missing," the sources added.
The mortal remains of Sepoy Karam Chand, who died while fighting Chinese aggressors in Arunachal Pradesh in 1962, were consigned to flames with full military honours in his native village near Palampur on Thursday morning. Touching scenes were witnessed at the cremation ground as his family members had assumed that Chand had been made a Prisoner of War.The martyr's body was spotted under the debris by a detachment of the Border Roads Organisation in Walong area on July 1.
Pawar claimed that since the last few weeks, conscious attempts were being made by the Karnataka CM to take the situation in a different direction.
The road network will stretch from Gujarat to Mizoram.
Over 800 vehicles, including 178 buses, were stranded on the Jammu-Srinagar highway on Monday morning after the road got blocked due to landslides triggered by heavy snowfall and rain since Saturday, official sources said.
The two-day-long rescue operation ended on Friday evening in hilly Kishtwar district of Jammu region where eleven persons were killed when two trucks carrying Border Roads Organisation labourers were trapped in a massive landslide early on Thursday. While the rescue teams recovered bodies of seven labourers on Thursday, they finally managed to retrieve the bodies of other four dead labourers on Friday.
Bodies of the two Border Roads Organisation personnel, who were killed in a terror attack in Afghanistan, were on Wednesday flown to Delhi.The bodies of M P Singh and C Govindaswamy, engineers with BRO, were airlifted from Kabul and reached the Indira Gandhi International airport this afternoon.Singh's body will be taken to Varanasi and Govindaswamy's to Tamil Nadu. Suspected Taliban extremists targeted Indian construction workers in Nimroz on Saturday, killing the duo.
Two personnel of Border Roads Organisation were on Saturday killed and several others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a convoy of Indian road construction workers in south west Afghanistan. Nearly 400 BRO personnel are engaged in construction of a key highway between Zaranj and Delaram in Afghanistan as part of India's assistance programme for reconstruction of the war-torn country.
Days after a Pentagon report said Beijing built a large village in a disputed territory in the Arunachal Pradesh sector, India on Thursday said it has neither accepted any illegal occupation of its territory by China nor has it accepted unjustified Chinese claims.
Pakistan has said that many of its countrymen have also been killed in Afghanistan.
In all, about 290 Indians are engaged in various projects in Afghanistan.
The body will be placed for public homage at the school where his son is studying, ahead of the cremation at the house premises itself, sources said.
India also went on an overdrive in expanding its military engagement with like-minded countries in its neighbourhood and beyond in the face of China's relentless attempts to become a regional hegemon and establish its primacy in South Asia.
The Amarnath yatra was suspended on Saturday due to closure of the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in the wake of a landslide triggered by heavy rains in Udhampur district of the state.
The situation in and around Lailapur, which was rocked by deadly violence, along the interstate border remained calm with a large number of Central Reserve Police Force troops patrolling the National Highway-306, they said.
The security measures are being intensified by the Afghan government after a fresh assessment suggested increased threat to the Indians, particularly those engaged in construction of a crucial highway from Delaram to Zaranj, sources said. The assessment of the threat was carried out by a two-member team of senior officials of the External Affairs Ministry which went to Afghanistan.
'It is flabbergasting to think that this heavenly region has, for decades, been coveted by India's aggressive neighbours,' says Claude Arpi after a recent visit to Ladakh. 'Wanting to use the newly created infrastructure to defend the borders after the clash of 2020 with China and the resulting standoffs, the home ministry is keen to boost border tourism to show that these areas are controlled by India.'
Two personnel of the Border Roads Organisation were killed and another injured as National Democratic Front of Bodoland insurgents fired at them in upper Assam's Dhemaji district, on Monday night.
He said the tragic incident, however, would not dampen Indo-Afghan relations
Worried parents and wife pray for Kutty's early return
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