Joint India-Nepal Military Exercise 'Surya Kiran-VIII' commences

The 8th India-Nepal battalion level combined military training exercise named as Exercise Surya Kiran -VIII commenced on February 23, 2015. The venue of the exercise was Integrated Army Training Centre Saljhandi, a base situated in Nepal. The exercise was started after an impressive opening ceremony in which the soldiers paid tributes to their national flags by singing their respective national anthems with pride. The Nepal forces were represented by a battalion from one of the infantry divisions from the Nepal army while the India army was represented by an equivalent strength from a massive brigade of Garud division.

Major General Padam Kakri of the Nepalese army welcomed the Indian troops and urged both the contingents to work towards achieving maximum cohesion and conceptual understanding among them, primarily to achieve inter operability and meet military objectives. He stressed upon the importance of building a harmonious relation within the forces and emphasized on free exchange of ideas and opinions to foster holistic growth.

The objective of the ongoing exercise is to carry out counter insurgency and counter terrorist operations by guarding the mountains, jungle terrain and respective borders by joint monitoring and dedicated effort. Focus was also laid on deriving ways for providing assistance and relief during pandemic, endemic and natural disasters. Issues like environmental degradation and pollution are also included in the scope of this exercise.

It should be noted that, the joint military exercise will continue for a period of two weeks during which the military forces will hone their tactical and technical skills to deal with counter insurgency and terrorism.

The Indo-Nepal battalion forces were provided with state of the art equipments for surveillance,tracking and closely monitoring activities across the borders. They will also be provided specialist weapons for close quarter battles with severely armed terrorists. The forces will also be provided with high end explosives, IED detectors as well as the latest communication equipments to facilitate skill training, systematic planning and rapid information sharing among the forces.