Lt Gen. Mohinder Singh with surrendered rebels at the Four Corps headquarters in Tezpur. Picture by Eastern Projections

Tezpur, Dec. 17: Protecting soft targets tops the unified command structure’s list of priorities in the wake of the crackdown on Northeast militant groups by the Royal Bhutan Army in the Himalayan kingdom.

This was stated by general-officer-commanding (GOC), 4 Corps, Mohinder Singh, during the surrender of 90 militants at an official ceremony at the Gajaraj Officers’ Institute here yesterday.

In his capacity as the GOC, 4 Corps, Gen. Singh heads the operations wing of the unified command structure — a three-tier joint formation of the army, police and paramilitary forces for counter-insurgency operations in the state.

Assam first came under the unified command structure in 1997 when the Ulfa and Bodo rebels were having a free run of the state. The idea to rope in all the three wings — army, police and paramilitary forces — for counter-insurgency operations was the brainchild of the then Union home minister Indrajit Gupta.

Both the operations wing and the strategy wing, which is headed by the chief secretary of Assam, of the unified command structure had, since its inception, identified two thrust areas to contain militancy in Assam — cut off flow of funds to the proscribed outfits and run over the camps which the militants had set up on foreign soil.

“Most of the militant outfits are bankrupt and on a renewed extortion spree in Upper Assam. Now, the long-awaited process of getting runover in foreign countries where they have been cooling their heels for over a decade has also begun,” Gen. Singh said.

Gen. Singh, however, made it clear that the operations in Bhutan were being conducted only by the Royal Bhutan Army. “The Indian army has nothing to do in the operations and we hope that the Bhutan government will be able to meet the challenge,” he said.

The Bhutan government has also maintained that the Indian army’s role in the offensive was limited to airlifting their injured soldiers for medical treatment.

However, Ulfa commander-in-chief Paresh Barua has been claiming since the day the operations commenced on Monday that Indian jawans were directly involved in the offensive.

Gen. Singh put the number of Ulfa cadre in Bhutan at 4,000, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) cadre at 500 and those of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) around 400. He said the outfits had 30 camps in Bhutan.

Among the 90 militants who surrendered yesterday, there were 64 Ulfa militants, 23 NDFB rebels, two NSCN insurgents and one All Tripura Tiger Force cadre. The surrendered cadre included the commander of Ulfa’s 709 battalion, “lieutenant” Jitu Kalita. The 709 battalion is based at Kalikhola in Bhutan.