Raksha
Mantri Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman joined the ongoing Army Commanders’ Conference at
Manekshaw Centre, Delhi Cantt today for over 30 minutes and addressed senior
Army hierarchy including Army Chief and all Army Commanders.
Welcoming
the Raksha Mantri, Army Chief informed the Audience about the extensive travel
undertaken by her to forward posts including Siachen after taking over the
charge of the Ministry. He also expressed pleasure on the fact that Smt
Sitharaman had already travelled extensively in border areas of the North-East
and also across the border in Tibet.
During
her address, Raksha Mantri referred to her visits to the forward areas and
meeting with troops as eye-opening. She conveyed admiration of the Nation for
the professionalism of the Indian Army during events like Doklam standoff,
response to natural disasters and keeping the situation of insurgency in the
North East states fairly under control.
Assuring
focus on capacity and capability development, she promised close monitoring of
improvement in strategic Infrastructure, long pending force modification
requests, welfare of serving, retired and families. Raksha Mantri informed of
her request to Home Minister for provisioning of HADR equipment to allow Indian
Army to use them during natural disasters.
Listing
her top priorities, she said integration of the Armed Forces is essential particularly
in the domain of training, communication, logistics and cyber among others to
prepare for any future conflict.
She
called upon Indian Army in continuing leveraging its strength in diplomatic
defence cooperation with neighbourhood and in the region, support for Make in
India dream and Nation building during all times. Raksha Mantri confirmed that
morale of forces will remain the highest among the priorities of the
government.
***
Col Aman Anand
PRO (Army)
