Indian Chief of the Army staff Gen VK Singh has said that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's remarks on Siachen could not be taken seriously.
Last month, Kayani had told media that both Pakistan and India should talk about pulling out troops from the region and spend more on the development and prosperity of their people. However, he made it clear that it should not be taken as Pakistan's weakness. In an interview to Times Now, the Indian general rejected Kayanis proposal to demilitarise the Siachen Glacier. "These are all gimmicks that keep coming from the establishment in Pakistan and we will be fools if we fall for them," Singh maintained.
"Today, your infrastructure is pretty well advanced. We are perfectly okay up there," Singh said. The Indian army chief also criticized The Indian Express report of April 4 about how troop movements near the capital on the night of January 16 - the day General Singh moved the Supreme Court - rang alarm bells in the highest levels of the government. He described the news item as part of an agenda and said the newspaper's Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, who was one of the authors of the report, had met him over lunch and asked him questions about the troop movements.
When asked if this conversation was on the record, Singh said Gupta was not recording the discussion, but he was quite sure no journalist in the world had ever been off the record." His response was No, while answering a question whether his side of the story was taken. Sindh alleged that someone in the government leaked his confidential letter to the prime minister on glaring weaknesses in defence preparedness.
When asked how it was done, Singh said neither he nor anyone close to him was the source of the leak. "In army, we don't do things like this. It is not our culture. Let us find out who leaked it," he said. When asked if somebody within the government or outside leaked the letter, he replied: "Has to be within the government, who will be outside?" Interestingly, just three days before his retirement, Singh also regretted moving Supreme Court on his date of birth issue, but questioned the manner in which the highest court of the land, and a judge on the bench, treated his petition. Nation
