‘2016 surgical strike was the 1st’: Lt Gen Ranbir Singh

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The army’s northern command chief, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, said the September 2016 surgical strike on terrorist launchpads in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) was the first such operation to be carried out. He said this while citing a recent reply of the Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act .

“A few days ago, DGMO said in a reply to an RTI query that the first surgical strike happened in September 2016. I do not want to go into what political parties say. They will be given an answer to by the government. What I have told you is a statement of fact,” Lt Gen Singh told reporters in Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur. He was referring to the DGMO’s reply in which it said on May 8 that the army had no data to suggest that surgical strikes were conducted across the de-facto India-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir — the Line of Control (LoC) — before September 2016.