Kargil report submitted to Govt with plea to make it public

The report sought to quell the controversy surrounding Brigadier Surinder Singh, the then Kargil Brigade commander who is said to have forewarned the Army top brass about the intrusions. Sources said that there was only a difference in perception and 8220;very different from what has been coming in the media.8221; Singh did not know of intrusions, sources said, but asked for modern equipment to counter Pakistan8217;s shelling in Kargil.

8220;The committee headed by K Subrahmanyam was not chartered to point fingers for lapses. Deficiencies, some prevailing over decades were pointed out and suggestions have been made to correct them,8221; sources said.

Thecommittee also did not go into many operational details but traced events leading to the Kargil conflict. 8220;The Committee has reproduced what he Singh said and their comments. Neither he nor anybody else for that matter knew about the intrusions till early May,8221; sources said.

In this light, the Committee suggests revamping of the intelligence apparatus. Counter-intelligence needs to be improved and the Government even needs to look into the existing command structure. Sources said the Committee has suggested integration of the Armed forces in the command structure at the Government level. This has been a longstanding demand of the Armed forces to be a part of the ministry.

8220;Nothing of essence has been excised. The issues of national security that the Committee excised are facts like force deployment and location of installations. They take away nothing for the report but could be of vital importance to the adversary,8221; sources added.

The committee which included B G Verghese, Lieutenant Generalretd K K Hazari and Satish Chandra met the Prime Minister at 10.30 am and stayed for almost 45 minutes. The report runs into 17 volumes and is about 2,300 pages in all. The committee was set up on July 29, 8217;99 to review the events leading up to the Pakistani aggression in the Kargil district of Ladakh in Jamp;K and to recommend such measures as are considered necessary to safeguard national security against such Armed intrusions.

The committee met former President R Venkatraman, Prime Minister Vajpayee and former prime ministers V P Singh, I K Gujral and P V Narasimha Rao and over a hundred other people including young Army officers who were directly involved in the operations.