The exercise is taking place at a time when tensions between India and Pakistan have gone up after the Pahalgam attack.
The aircraft was allowed to move inside India as the air defence personnel knew who was inside the plane, they said.
The Indian Air Force (IAF), soon after receiving information about the sighting of unidentified flying objects near the Imphal airport on Sunday, scrambled its Rafale fighter aircraft to search for them.
The Rafale aircraft which have already arrived in Ambala would start ferrying to the Hashimara air base in next few days and the squadron would get operational by July 26, government sources told ANI in New Delhi.
The Chinese military has been behaving aggressively over issues in the Yangtse in the vicinity of the Holydip and Parikrama area on the LAC where the Chinese side has been opposing Indian positions.
An IAF spokesperson said in New Delhi that the MiG-27 took off from the Hashimara Air Base for a routine sortie and crashed within minutes of take-off.
The aircraft crashed somewhere near Alipurduar in Jalpaiguri district around 12:30 pm, a spokesman said. This is the seventh IAF aircraft crash this year and the third MiG to crash in the Dooars region of North Bengal.
The gap between the existing air bases in China close to the LAC for fighter aircraft operations was around 400 kms but this would be bridged with the operationalisation of the Shakche airfield.
According to an official statement, Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said the 19 other places in the country include Phalodi-Jaisalmer road and Barmer-Jaisalmer road in Rajasthan, Kharagpur-Balasore road in West Bengal, Hashimara-Guwahati road in Assam, Bhuj-Naliya road in Gujarat, Leh/Nyoma area in Assam and on the Jorhat-Baraghat road, among others.
The planes would now officially be inducted on October 8 into the IAF when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visits France but the planes would start arriving in India only in May 2020 after validation of the India Specific Enhancements and training of pilots and personnel.
As per earlier plans, Balakot operations in-charge and current Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa was to travel to receive the plane on September 19-20 from France.
This is the ninth IAF Aircraft crash since January this year. "The aircraft was on a routine training sortie from the Hashimara airbase and crashed at around 1310 hours, nearly 15 kilometres from its take off base near New Jalpaiguri," IAF officials said.
An IAF helicopter located the wreckage but the fate of the pilot, Squadron Leader V Sinha, was not known.
In the first mishap of an Indian Air Force aircraft this year, a MIG-27 ground attack fighter crashed near Hashimara air base in North Bengal on Thursday, but the pilot managed to eject out safely. There was no report of any casualty or damage on the ground. The Air Force has instituted a Court of Inquiry to find out the causes of the crash. The aircraft got air borne at 12:30 pm for a routine training mission and crashed 10.2 kms east of the base at 12:40 pm.
The missile system can target aircraft up to 30 km away, at altitudes up to 18,000 metres. It has the capability to neutralise aerial targets like fighter jets, cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles.
It was Soni Somarajan's biggest dream -- to see himself as a proud member of the Indian Armed Forces. When Life brutally shattered that dream, he wove a new one.
The Chinese air force is now a 400,000-person force that flies some 2,000 combat aircraft -- more than thrice the size of the Indian Air Force.
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