India plans to ready over 280 square kilometers of land in Ladakh for military field fire

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) – The administration of Ladakh plans to notify more than 71,000 acres of land (about 287 sq km) for the occupying Indian army’s artillery practice and field firing.

Ladakh was a part of the predominantly Muslim region of Jammu and Kashmir under occupation by India. It is a Himalayan cold desert region which has been carved out as a separate centrally-administered Union Territory by the Indian government — a move rejected by neighbouring Pakistan as a contravention of international law.

A notification issued by Umang Narula, an advisor to the Lieutenant Governor of Ladakh, said the proposed land, situated in the Drass area of Kargil, will be used for artillery practice and field firing for five years. Any objections in this regard can be communicated to the Kargil deputy commissioner’s office within two months, the notification said.

A regional government in India is supposed to issue such a notice before notifying an area as a field firing range for the army.

In 2017, the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir notified an area of more than 60,000 acres in the Durbuk area of Leh for a period of five years.

Kargil and Leh are the two districts of the Ladakh region, which was the largest of the three geographical divisions of Jammu and Kashmir before India withdrew its political autonomy and downgraded it into two federally-ruled territories — a move decried as illegal by Pakistan as it violates the terms of the UN resolutions over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

While Kargil was the theater of an armed confrontation between India and Pakistan in 1999, a skirmish between Indian and Chinese soldiers in May 2020 resulted in the deaths of more than two dozen personnel on both sides along the vast border called ‘Line of Actual Control’ between the two countries.

Both China and India moved thousands of additional soldiers to the areas of confrontation, even as they are engaged in efforts to resolve the boundary issues.

The Jammu and Kashmir region is one of the most militarized zones in the world. Some estimates put the number of armed personnel on each side of the three borders — Pakistan, India and China — at more than half a million. Between 100,000 to 130,000 soldiers and paramilitary soldiers are deployed for anti-insurgency operations mainly across Kashmir Valley and some parts of the Jammu region.

The predominantly Muslim majority region has been denied the fundamental right of self-determination and has been held under brutal Indian occupation since the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947.