Decode Politics: As Opp demands report on Pahalgam attack, what was Vajpayee era Kargil panel it cited?

Indian Express

2 days ago

Since the Pahalgam terror attack and the retaliatory Operation Sindoor, the Opposition has been asking the Narendra Modi government if it intends to form a committee to examine the April 22 attack, which left 26 civilians dead.
On Tuesday, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, among other leaders, reiterated the demand for a committee report, similar to one that was issued by the Kargil Review Committee (KRC), which was formed under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in the aftermath of the 1999 India-Pakistan conflict.
The surprise infiltration of Pakistani troops across the Line of Control (LoC) in 1999 had prompted the then Vajpayee government to constitute a high-level committee to study the events that led to the conflict, and make recommendations for avoiding a Kargil-like situation in the future.
In July 1999, three days after the end of the Kargil conflict, in which 527 troops were killed, the Vajpayee government set up the KRC, helmed by defence analyst K Subrahmanyam, who was Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's father.
The KRC spoke to nearly 100 senior military and intelligence officials, diplomats, politicians and journalists in the course of compiling its report.
In February 2000, a little over six months after it was set up, the report was tabled in Parliament. Despite calls from the Congress-led Opposition at the time, its findings were not discussed in either House.
Even when the report was later made publicly available, many of its key findings, especially pertaining to intelligence, were classified in the interest of national security – and continue to remain so.
The KRC focused on 'systemic deficiencies' and did not go into individual shortcomings behind the Pakistani incursion, to provide 'generic' recommendations, then Union Defence Minister George Fernandes said in Parliament after the report was tabled.
However, it came down heavily on the 'deficiencies' in the Indian security and intelligence apparatus. 'The findings bring out many grave deficiencies in India's security management system… There has been very little change over the past 52 years despite the 1962 debacle, the 1965 stalemate and the 1971 victory, the growing nuclear threat, end of the Cold War, continuance of proxy war in Kashmir for over a decade and the revolution in military affairs. The political, bureaucratic, military and intelligence establishments appear to have developed a vested interest in the status quo,' the KRC observed in its report. 'The Committee strongly feels that the Kargil experience, the continuing proxy war and the prevailing nuclearised security environment justify a thorough review of the national security system in its entirety.'
In particular, the KRC pointed out that intelligence agencies – notably the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) – failed to track the movement and buildup of Pakistani troops around the LoC before the infiltration. It said that the R&AW, Intelligence Bureau and Directorate General of Military Intelligence 'lacked inter-agency interaction and coordination' among themselves and with the Ministry of Defence, and that the R&AW's 'virtual monopoly' in intelligence gathering had led to 'a little redundancy to rectify failures'.
The report also pointed to shortcomings in human intelligence gathering, a lack of adequate satellite-imaging capabilities, and complexities introduced by the climate and terrain of regions like Kargil, while highlighting the need to invest in better equipment and cross-border intelligence efforts.
The report said that 'a Kargil-like situation could perhaps have been avoided had the Indian Army followed a policy of Siachenisation to plug gaps' in a 168-km stretch along the LoC. However, the KRC noted, 'such a dispersal of forces to hold uninhabited territory of no strategic value would have dissipated considerable military strength and effort, and would not at all have been cost effective'.
The KRC recommended an 'independent body of credible experts', rather than an 'overburdened' bureaucracy, to conduct a large-scale review of India's security and intelligence system.
The report proved to be a catalyst for several reforms in the Armed Forces and intelligence agencies, over a span of the next two decades. It led to the formulation of a Group of Ministers (GoM) in April 2000 to review the national security system and further consider the recommendations of the KRC.
In 2002, the GoM recommended the creation of the Defence Intelligence Agency, a centralised coordination body, and in 2004, a technical intelligence agency called the National Technical Research Organisation.
In 2011, the UPA government led by Manmohan Singh set up a task force headed by former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra, partly as a response to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, to re-examine the pending recommendations of the KRC and to 'review the working of the national security system'.
The task force found that many of the key recommendations of the KRC had not been implemented, including on defence procurement, on framing of a 'National Security Doctrine', and on the creation of the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), which would require consultations with political parties.
The GoM's recommendation of a CDS was only implemented in 2020, under the Narendra Modi-led NDA government. The officer in the post oversees all three wings of the Armed Forces to ensure inter-services coordination.
The KRC's other recommendations included carving out the responsibilities of a National Security Advisor (NSA) out of the role of the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, while highlighting the need for a full-time NSA. It called for a reorganisation of structural linkages between the Ministry of Defence, the Armed Forces and intelligence agencies, and said India needed a 'young and fit Army'.
The Aadhaar programme, too, traces its roots back to the KRC to an extent, as it suggested the creation of a 'multi-purpose national identity card' to help stem illegal migration.
Months after the Kargil War, the Lok Sabha elections were held in September-October 1999. The BJP returned to power and formed an NDA coalition government. In its first session, discussion in Parliament saw several MPs not only accuse the BJP of 'making political gains' out of the Kargil War, but also raise concerns over the inquiries into it.
Late in October 1999, the issue of the KRC came up in Parliament. CPI MP Indrajit Gupta, a former Minister of Home Affairs, said in Parliament, 'I know that a body has been set up to review the Kargil operations, but it is not what we were asking for. We wanted an inquiry, a proper full-dressed probe to be held into the question of who is to be blamed for what happened.'
P A Sangma, then in the NCP and a former Union minister, sought that the KRC report be tabled and discussed in Parliament, while then Congress president and Amethi MP Sonia Gandhi said, 'I earnestly hope that the government will keep us informed about the findings of the Kargil Review Committee. There are far too many unanswered questions on Kargil. The country has a right to know.'
However, when the report was tabled in Parliament in February 2000, its findings and recommendations were not specifically discussed. In April 2000, the government appointed a GoM to look into the KRC's report, leading to some criticism from the Opposition. Sections of both the KRC and GoM's reports were redacted before being released to the public.
The CPI(M)'s Somnath Chatterjee, who would later serve as the Lok Sabha Speaker, said, 'What happened during the Kargil War? The report of the Subrahmanyam Committee is there… How to deal with that? Appoint another committee? Over the Subrahmanyam Committee, another committee headed by our Home Minister has been appointed… You go on appointing Committee after Committee. This is the best way of deferring this issue.'
In December 2000, another MP questioned why the KRC's report was not discussed in Parliament. Former Congress Working Committee member and Faridkot MP J S Brar said, 'Even after a lapse of one-and-a-half years, the report on the Kargil conflict, an important issue for which our brave soldiers laid down their lives, has not been discussed in this House. Today, the families of the Kargil martyrs are looking towards Parliament and are beginning to wonder why Parliament cannot even discuss the report on the Kargil conflict… A discussion should be held on the report.'
The KRC report has since found mention in Parliamentary debates on external affairs, Pakistan in particular, but still no major debate was held on the report. In May 2002, nearly three years after the war, Sangma again raised the KRC during a discussion on a terrorist attack in Jammu.
'The solution (to Pakistani aggression) actually lies here, in the Kargil Review Committee report. Here is the solution: 50% of the solution lies here in this book and 50% lies with the will of the government of the day… Almost three years have gone. What action has been taken in this respect? … What action has been taken on all those recommendations? This nation should know about it,' Sangma said.
After the Congress-led UPA came to power in 2004, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence and the Ministry of Defence said in a report in 2007 that of the ensuing GoM report's 75 recommendations on the basis of the KRC, '63 recommendations have been implemented and action on 12 recommendations is in various stages of progress'.