New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s abruptly announced 21-day nationwide lockdown on national television from March 24 onwards caught most Indians unaware.
Among them were about 1,000 Indian Army officers and men from the Northern Command who were undergoing various training programmes and completing similar military assignments in the many military institutes that dot the Indian Army’s Southern Command.
For the entire 21-day period and a few days more, they were effectively ‘stuck’ in their institutes adhering to the special ‘social distancing’ protocol ordered for the military.
While there was an urgent need to decongest these institutes due to COVID 19 ‘social distancing’ rules, it was also important that these men get back to work up north particularly because it has been ‘business as usual’ at the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan, and the presence of the fighting men was imperative.
Now after being duly informed by the defence and the Union home ministries, the Railway Board—the top decision-making body of the Indian Railways— on Wednesday ordered 23 Linke-Hofmann-Busch (LHB) coaches for the special train “due to unprecedented operational necessity created in view of the COVID-19” which will soon start the 3,100 km rail journey from Bengaluru to Jammu, ETV Bharat has learnt.
With more than two million infected and more than 1,30,000 dead, there may be worldwide frenzy and panic over the raging Covid-19 pandemic, but Pakistan continues to violate the ceasefire agreement with impunity on a daily basis.
On Thursday morning too, Pakistani army’s automatic weapons and mortars opened up at around 9:45 AM in the Qasba and Kirni sectors in Poonch and again at 11:45 AM in Nowshera sector in Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir.
Read: Pak army shells forward areas along LoC in J-K's Rajouri, Poonch
A day or two is being given to the Army men to assemble at Bengaluru. Headquartered in Pune, the Southern Command straddles nine states and four Union territories, altogether accounting for about 40 per cent of India’s land territory.
Both the Indian Army and the Railways—two huge behemoths of the Indian establishment—have been at the forefront of the war against COVID-19.
The Indian Army has fanned out across the length and breadth of the country.
From setting up and operating wellness centres to conducting tests and catering to 360-degree medical treatment, it has sent its teams to foreign countries even as many teams have been kept on the ‘standby mode’ to fly out to the neighbouring countries at the first call for assistance.
Indian Railways is rapidly modifying thousands of its coaches to function as moveable hospitals and isolation wards where infected patients can be quarantined till they recover. The crucial advantage of such ‘hospitals on rails’ is that they can move fast to places where outbreaks are reported from.
It is to be noted that with 13 lakh fighting men and women, the Indian Army is the world’s biggest.
Indian Railways is among the biggest five railways networks in the world with a rail network length of more than 1,23,200 km across 7,350 stations.
Also Read: COVID 2019: Indian Army in 'standby' mode for help in 'friendly neighbourhood'
