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Namastute.


Monday, February 15, 2010

Odisha set to become major Defence base

PNS | Bhubaneswar

The State will soon emerge as a major defence base with the Army, Air Force and Navy evincing keen interest to set up their bases to counter any possible attack by China in the coming days.

The Air Force and the Navy have gone ahead and started taking initiatives in this direction. Odisha is considered a soft target for China as it has the base tasting centre for India’s prestigious inter-continental ballistic missile Agni at Wheeler Island in Bhadrak, Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) at Balasore, MiG factory at Koraput and ordnance factory at Saintala in Balangir.

In order to bring Odisha under a safe net and to counter a possible attack by China on Indian soil from the Myanmar site, the Defence Ministry has decided to go ahead and has started executing one plan after another. Sources said the eastern sector doesn’t have a major fighter air base and is still considered as a vulnerable area. IAF officials maintain that with the change of foreign policy, China’s growing influence and more thrust being given on South-East Asia in the current world scenario, India also wants to play its role in the area and Odisha can provide the best platform for this purpose.

After Kalaikunda in West Bengal, there is no an air force base in the eastern sector. Almost all the air force bases like Bagdogra, Kalaikunda, Guwahati, Hashimara, Jorhat and Tezpur are in the north-east with forward airbases at Agartala, Kolkata, Pangarh and Shillong. Out of these, Bagdogra, Kalaikunda and Hashimara are air force bases for fighter squadrons.

A “blind zone” exists between the Kalaikunda and Visakhapatnam naval bases. To overcome these difficulties and to provide solid back up system to the forwarding bases to thwart any Chinese threat, IAF wants to set up a major fighter air base at Charbatia, the aerial reconnaissance post of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), near Cuttack.

Charbatia, with 2,000 acres of land, is now under the Union Home Ministry from where RAW operates. The airstrip came up in the 1960s with the help of CIA to keep a watch on then East Pakistan and China. But it lost its significance after Bangladesh came up and the Indo-China war came to an end. With the growing influence of the Chinese, the air-strip has become important for the IAF.

Air Marshal JN Burma has already held discussions with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in this connection and urged him to recommend to the Home Ministry to hand over the land and nearly 400 dilapidated quarters to the IAF. “Unless the State recommends the Centre to transfer lands to the IAF, it would not be able to set up its base. The State’s logistic support is essential to set up a base,” admit IAF officials, adding that if one draws a straight line, it would be a straight line between Charbatia and Myanmar. “The Chinese can then know that someone deep inside is watching it,” said IAF officials.

Secretary, Information and Public Relations Pradeep Kumar Mohapatra said the IAF has already given a proposal to this effect and wants to invest Rs 5,000 crore in the base. “The Government is looking into this proposal seriously,” said Mohapatra.

As the eastern sector does not have a single radar station, it wants to set up a radar station. “It has chosen Hirakud in Sambalpur as it is situated on a higher altitude. The purpose of setting up the radar deep inside at a higher place is that that you can look at all and no one can watch you,” said a senior defence official, adding that the main purpose was not to give protection to Hirakud dam rather than to look into the growing Chinese activities. In order to avoid any major attention, IAF just wants to downplay it by stating that the radar was meant for the dam, said defence officials. Other security agencies are there to give protection to the dam, he said over phone from Delhi. It has already installed a major radar on the Puri- Konark coast.

Similarly, the Indian Navy has intensified its activities on the Bay of Bengal near the Odisha coast. The Indian Army has already given its signal that it is going to start its major activities at Amarda in Balasore.

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