...with a principal reason to stop Pakistan's ISI's support to insurgencies in the North-East of India.
The Indian side has an edge over their Chinese counterparts in terms of battling the weather as a large number of them have already done duty in the Ladakh sector, including the Siachen glacier or other high altitude positions, sources said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing in Beijing that "at the moment the situation in the boundary region between China and India is overall stable and controllable".
Besides attending the SCO defence ministers' meeting, Singh will hold talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu and several other top military officials with an aim to expedite the implementation of several defence procurement programmes, they said.
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.
The IMD also issued a red alert in the same 10 districts for August 3 also.
Keeping trusted men in key positions at Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar has become vital for Bajwa, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
The Taliban is highly pragmatic and would regard it wasteful to resume military offensive to capture Panjshir. The Taliban's preference, historically, has been to keep the military option as the last resort, explains Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
Both the Indian and Chinese armies have brought in more troops in sensitive locations like Demchok, Daulat Beg Oldie and areas around Galwan river as well as Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh, the sources said. The area around Galwan has been a point of friction between the two sides for over six decades.
Nine Lankan soldiers were also killed.
The Indian Army has been matching up to the Chinese build up in both Pangong Tso lake and Galwan Valley, the two locations in Ladakh which have witnessed major reinforcement of troops in the last two weeks, sources said. There was very little chance of easing of tension anytime soon as both sides are aggressively holding onto their respective positions, they said.
As per the agreement reached by the two sides, India and China will withdraw the forward deployment in a phased and coordinated manner, the defence minister said.
Verma also sought quashing of a note issued by the defence ministry rejecting his plea against Singh's appointment.
The coming together of the Quad and the Australia-UK-US grouping would be a formidable adversary, moving toward the creation of a 'thousand ship navy' that reins in the PLA navy in the Indo-Pacific.
India on Wednesday delivered a strong message to China that the 'unprecedented' incident in the Galwan Valley will have a 'serious impact' on the bilateral relationship and held the 'pre-meditated' action by Chinese army directly responsible for the violence that left 20 Indian Army personnel dead.
Indian and Chinese troops remained engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation in several disputed areas.
People familiar with the situation in the region said the two sides were engaged in trying to resolve the dispute, but there was no indication of a positive outcome yet as both the armies continued to bolster their positions in disputed areas of Pangong Tso and Galwan Valley and Demchok.
The talks between the two armies are going to be held this week at multiple locations including Patroling point 14 (Galwan area), Patrolling point 15, and Hot Springs area, top government sources said.
The sources said the focus of the talks was to take forward the disengagement process in friction points like Hot Springs, Gogra and Depsang in eastern Ladakh.
This is the first such incident along the border with China that Indian armed forces personnel have been killed after a gap of nearly 45 years.
The intrusions into India were likely carried out by the PLA's better trained and equipped 'mobile operational units'.
Four Chinese soldiers were killed in the fierce clash with the Indian Army in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh in June last year, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) acknowledged for the first time on Friday.
While the de-escalation process was underway, a violent face-off took place on Monday night between Indian and Chinese troops leading to the death of 20 Indian soldiers.
The US hopes that the differences will be resolved peacefully, officials said in Washington.
The Southern Naval command on Wednesday called off its 14-day long rescue operations in flood-hit Kerala, saying there were no more requests for evacuation as waters receding in affected areas.
India is likely to convey to Russia that its troops would not be participating in the multinational military exercise Kavkaz-2020 where Chinese and Pakistani troops are also going to be there.
The Indian side is expected to present specific proposals at the talks to deescalate tension in Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley and Demchok -- the three areas in eastern Ladakh where the two sides have been on a bitter standoff for last one month, the sources said.
Over 24 Tigers rebels are believed to have been killed on Sunday when the Sri Lankan Navy attacked and destroyed a ship carrying arms for the LTTE. "There were 24 to 25 people aboard the ship and we believe all of them have been killed," Defence Spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said. The Lankan naval task group comprising Off Shore Patrol vessels SLNS Sayura, SLNS Sagara, Fast Attack Vessel SLNS Suranimila and Rendezvous vessel 521 were engaged in the elite operation.
Many of them sustained minor injuries in the clash near Naku La in the Sikkim sector along the Sino-Indo border on Saturday
The Chinese side has particularly bolstered its presence in the Galwan Valley, erecting around 100 tents in the last two weeks and bringing in heavy equipment for construction of bunkers, notwithstanding the stiff protest by Indian troops. There have been reports of multiple incidents of transgressions by Chinese troops in several areas in Eastern Ladakh.
With the tropical cyclone Tauktae set to cross the Gujarat coast and make a landfall as an 'extremely severe cyclonic storm' by Monday night, the state government has shifted over 1.5 lakh people to safer places and mobilised disaster response teams.
The activation of diplomatic channels is likely to yield better results than a simmering hostility, recommends Ajai Shukla.
'When the war against Ukraine that Putin started is not going the way he was expecting it to and his military options are getting onerous, a bit of nuclear sabre rattling is what he hopes will turn things around for him and Russia.'
Sahu fell into the unused 80-feet-deep borewell, located in the backyard of his house in Pihrid village in Malkharoda development block, around 2 pm on Friday while playing.
In the review meeting, Singh told the top military brass to continue to deal with the situation in eastern Ladakh and other areas with "firmness".
The emperor's appetite for enlarging his realm translated into a fetish for raising taxes, despite the simplicity of his personal lifestyle, points out Devangshu Datta.
It is learnt that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has conveyed to top military brass that there was no need for reviewing the implementation of any of the key projects along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand or in Arunachal Pradesh in view of the aggressive behaviour by Chinese troops in several sensitive areas.
Indian military sources said no firearms were used in the clashes and that most of the injuries were sustained following stone-pelting and use of rods by the Chinese side.
The two sides have already held at least 12 rounds of talks between local commanders and three rounds of talks between major general-rank officials but no positive outcome came out from the discussions, they said.
The 1971 war reaffirmed the importance of inspirational senior leadership in battle and heralded the emergence of a new fighting class amongst officers and men of India's armed forces.
