PM held back 2016 surgical strike till Sushma’s UNGA speech: Book

Ajay Banerjee

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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 24

Around 9 pm on September 23 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had walked into the ‘military ops room’ of the Army on the first floor of the South Block in Delhi.

The situation was grim. Modi had to take an important decision — how to react to Pakistan-backed terrorists who had killed 19 Armymen in a brazen attack on a military camp in Uri on September 18. The nation was demanding action.

In the ‘ops room’ sat then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Army Chief Dalbir Singh Suhag and DGMO Lt Gen Ranbir Singh.

A long briefing by the military operations team was heard with rapt attention. Modi finally decided: “Special forces raid across the frontier was the best possible course of action at that point,” says a tell-all book “Securing India the Modi way”, authored by Nitin A Gokhale.

But the strikes were to wait till External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke in the UNGA, Modi announced. The book is slated for release in New Delhi on the first anniversary of the strikes.

Gokhale, formerly Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, has anecdotal inside details on why the strikes were carried out, how the decision was taken and what all happened in the final moments.

It was on September 28 that Lt Gen DS Hooda, the northern Army Commander, had signaled the launch of ‘Operation X’ – not the official name of the operation. Separate targets across the LoC were to be engaged at separate times in the wee hours of September 29.

In Udhampur, at the Northern Command headquarters, General Hooda (now retired) had his resignation letter ready in his pocket, just in case the mission failed. Matters were tense till the SF teams returned to base on September 29. A total of 70-75 Pak-trained militants and Pak Army regulars were killed, says the book.