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.

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Col Aman Anand

PRO (Army)