The Heron unmanned aerial vehicles are already in the Air Force, Navy, and the Army and are being used extensively at the moment by both Army surveillance and Target acquisition batteries and Air Force in the Ladakh sector.
Calling the 'events' along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) very disturbing, the external affairs minister said they have raised some very 'basic concerns'. When asked whether it will be a long-haul or a breakthrough is expected soon, Jaishankar said: "I would not go into prediction zone at all whether it is going to be easy or not, and what will be the timelines and so on."
'If our troops on the frontlines were sleeping for two hours, they can perhaps now sleep for 2.5 hours because when the adversary is right in front, then you can't even blink your eyes, you have to be absolutely alert.'
The country will not allow any "unilateral action" on its border and will pay any cost to thwart such attempts, he told the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha's state conference.
'Everyone is unhappy with the lieutenant governor's administration, which is ignorant, high-handed, and inaccessible.'
The meeting comes against the backdrop of demands by the opposition seeking details of the violent face-off between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh which left 20 Indian Army personnel dead.
Asked about the reports of the troops on both sides disengaging and moving back to their previous positions, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing in Beijing that both sides are taking steps to ease the situation along the borders.
'Even Yashwantrao Chavan, who was defence minister, too had gone to the China border and boosted the morale of the forces'
The last conversation between the two leaders was on April 4 on the issue of hydroxychloroquine.
DRDO is offering a 30-35-tonne light tank that it says will be a match for what the army faces -- China's new Type-15 light tank.
The strong statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah's office came after former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah asked bureaucrats in the Union Territory to resist any pressure to "further disempower" the incoming elected government.
"We have seen movements in training areas. It is an annual exercise. They come for training. We also go to training areas. We have been keeping a constant eye on it. We have forces along the LAC and they are adequate to deal with any action or activity," Gen Naravane told India Today channel.
In an interactive session at a think-tank in Paris, Jaishankar said he was optimistic about resolving the issue through dialogue and that significant headway has been made in many of the friction points.
Four students, who were arrested from Ladakh in connection with a blast near the Israel Embassy here in January, were sent to 10-day police remand by a magistrate court, officials said.
In his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS Summit in the Russian city of Kazan, Xi said that China-India relations are essentially a question of how the two large developing countries and neighbours, each with a 1.4-billion-strong population, treat each other, it added.
'Why did your generals try to grab a few square kilometres of Indian territory in Ladakh?' 'And what happened to the hard work that you and Prime Minister Modi put into the Wuhan and Mamallapuram meets?' Claude Arpi writes a letter to Xi Jinping, China's self-styled supreme leader, who turns 68 today, June 15.
Replying to clarifications sought by MPs in Rajya Sabha on his statement on the border row, the minister said skirmishes and face-off with China in the last few months have been primarily over the issue of patrolling the Ladakh border.
'Russia is the only country that can act as facilitator for any eventual Chinese-Indian rapprochement,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The world has seen India's strength and commitment to protecting its borders and sovereignty, he said and paid rich tributes to the 20 soldiers who were killed during a violent clash with Chinese troops.
Asked about the recent meeting between Modi and Xi, and if Russia had any role in it, Alipov said, "We have not played any role in it, but we are happy that it took place in Kazan... We wholeheartedly welcome the meeting."
The Indian Army on Friday strongly insisted on early disengagement of troops by China from all the friction points in eastern Ladakh at the eighth round of corps commander-level talks between the two sides that primarily focused on a roadmap for restoration of peace and tranquillity in the region, according to people familiar with the developments.
'Once RM is done commenting on the hand symbol, can he answer: Have the Chinese occupied Indian territory in Ladakh,' he asked on Twitter. Singh had on Monday hit out at Gandhi with a couplet of noted Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib, saying when there is pain in the hand, one takes medicine, but what does one do when the hand itself is a pain.
In its first official account of the standoff between the two militaries, the ITBP revealed how its troops "not only effectively used shield to protect themselves but also responded fiercely to advancing PLA (Chinese People's Liberation Army) troops and brought the situation under control". "The ITBP has recommended the names of 21 men who faced the Chinese during the face-offs and skirmishes in May-June this year for gallantry," it said.
Chushul and Depsang are not vital in this game of Chinese checkers, the Indian Ocean Region is. Keeping our maritime prowess restricted has to be a key Chinese strategic interest and it would appear that the LAC affair has helped China achieve its aim, points out Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
The Chinese military on Thursday said the situation along the India-China border 'at present' is 'generally stable' and both sides have maintained 'effective' communication to resolve the military standoff in eastern Ladakh.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday credited the breakthrough agreement with China on patrolling along the Line of Actual Control to the military which worked in 'very very unimaginable' conditions and deft diplomacy.
Many of them sustained minor injuries in the clash near Naku La in the Sikkim sector along the Sino-Indo border on Saturday
'The greatness of India can be experienced by meeting Indians on the frontiers of India.' 'Every citizen on the border is a soldier'
The IAF chief also said Pakistan has become a pawn of Chinese policy and its dependence on China would increase further in future. He said India needs to understand the interplay of some major events in its vicinity that would impact the security scenario of the region.
If it were moments of shock and anxiety on the day when the news about the clash in Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh was flashed by TV channels, a call from the Army confirming he was safe and then followed by Vishnu's own calls and the video chat overjoyed his family.
Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including the dead and seriously injured.
The sources said the situation in eastern Ladakh remained 'tense' and that around 30-40 soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) are holding up at a position close to an Indian post in the Rezang-La ridgeline in eastern Ladakh.
There will be status quo with regard to the MoUs signed with Hengli Engineering, PMI Electro Mobility Solutions JV with Photon and Great Wall Motors on June 15, 2020.
'The Galwan clash in 2020 resulted in a large number of troops being moved from J&K to Eastern Ladakh which caused a thinning of deployment in the Jammu area.'
Lt Gen Baggavalli Somashekar Raju will take over as the next vice chief of the Army Staff on May 1, the defence ministry said on Friday.
Top military officers, including Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, had been summoned to make presentations on military uniforms.
In the conversation, President Trump extended an invitation to Modi to attend the next G-7 summit to be held in the US, the Ministry of External Affairs said. On Saturday, Trump pitched for expansion of the G7 comprising the world's most advanced economies by including India and three other countries.
National Conference (NC) vice president Omar Abdullah Tuesday asserted that there should be no "fiddling" with the mandate of people in Jammu and Kashmir, and the Centre and the Raj Bhavan must not indulge in any "machinations".
Spokesperson in the MEA Anurag Srivastava said both sides have agreed to work for an early resolution to the issue in keeping with broader guidance provided by leaders of the two countries for ensuring peace and tranquillity along the border areas. He, however, did not respond to questions relating to reports of pulling back of troops by both India and China from certain friction points in the Galwan Valley and Hot Spring areas in eastern Ladakh in the last few days.
In a year bookended by intractable conflicts and geopolitical fragmentation, India focused on ramping up military prowess by broadly firming up defence procurement worth Rs 4.22 lakh crore even as Indian and Chinese militaries completed pulling back their troops from border face-off points in eastern Ladakh.
