A top Air Force officer on Wednesday said there was no plan “at the moment” to capture Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), but expressed the hope that someday India will have the “whole of Kashmir”. Speaking to reporters at an event here to mark the 75th anniversary of the Indian troops’ Budgam landing, Air Officer Commanding in Chief (AOC-in-C) of Western Air Command, Air Marshal Amit Dev, also said the people in PoK are not being treated very fairly by the Pakistanis. “…All the activities which were carried out by the Indian Air Force and the Army (on October 27, 1947) resulted in ensuring the freedom of this part of Kashmir. I am sure that someday, the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir will also join this part of Kashmir and we will have the whole of Kashmir in years to come,” he said. However, when asked if the force has any plans to capture the PoK, Air Marshal Dev said there was no plan at the moment. “(The whole of) Kashmir is one, a nation is one. People on both sides have common attachments. Today or tomorrow, history is witness, that nations come together. We do not have a plan at the moment, but, God willing, it will always be there because people in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are not being treated very fairly by the Pakistanis,” he said. Indian troops had landed in Kashmir on October 27, 1947, a day after the then Maharaja Hari Singh signed the instrument of accession with India following the Pakistani tribal raids. The AOC-in-C of the Western Air Command said the IAF faces many challenges, but the basic one is of technology. “The rate of change of technology is so fast in the world today that we have to keep pace with that. If any nation which is to grow economically has to have a strong military, we must fulfill our obligation to the nation in the years to come…and we are always ready for the challenge,” he said. The IAF has become a very capable force and in the years to come, “‘we will continue to serve the nation with honour”‘ he added. Asked about the drone attacks, Air Marshal Dev said they can inflict minimal damage only. “We had equipment against it (drone attacks) ready, and it was deployed here as well. We are now increasing the deployment by further procurement. Drone challenge is a small challenge and we will be able to deal with that challenge as and when it comes,” he said. He said celebrating the 75 years of Budgam landing was a historic occasion. “After the instrument of accession was signed, we moved in our troops quickly and Srinagar airfield was saved and thereafter we launched a further offensive and pushed the Pakistani military, which came as Kabalis (tribals), further back. “I am sure if the UN had not intervened, perhaps, the entire Kashmir would have been ours,” he said. He said the IAF and the Army carried many other small missions including the operations in Poonch after an airstrip was laid there in a short span of seven days, attacks at Srinagar airfield, in Skardu on ammunition dump, and in Leh.

India is in the final stages to clear a National Cybersecurity Strategy in the wake of growing cyber attacks and threats from nation-state actors against the country, national cyber security coordinator Lt. Gen. (retd) Rajesh Pant has stressed.

There are about 4 million malware that are detected every day and India is one of the most cyber attacked nations in the world.

“One of the reasons for that is that we have a large attack surface with 1.15 billion phones and more than 700 million Internet users,” Pant said during the third edition of ‘ExpertSpeak’, a curated dialogue series by Microsoft with industry experts.

“What we require now is a National Cybersecurity Strategy, which we have been working on over the last two years and is in the cabinet for the final stamp. The first thing we need is a governance structure, because there is no central apex organisation which is responsible for the cybersecurity of the nation,” Pant stressed.

“That is the first thing we have to tackle, because the difference between a policy and a strategy is that a strategy is an action-oriented plan with a timeline.”

The pandemic has taught countries that cybercrime is now an essential service, just like the police and fire departments.

“Fortunately, we’ve managed to avoid any major cyber-attacks or threats and that is one of the reasons why in June, we jumped from 47 to 10 in the new rankings of the Global Cybersecurity Index,” Pant said during the event on Tuesday, organised as part of the Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

With the policy comes the challenge to address cyberskilling. Reports estimate that there will be about 1.5 million job vacancies in cybersecurity by 2025 in India.

“There’s a strong industry need to build programmes that bridge this skills gap in cybersecurity. Closing the gender gap in cybersecurity and enabling more diversity in the field is another critical priority,” said Keshav Dhakad, General Counsel, Microsoft India.

Microsoft has invested in the ‘CyberShikshaa’ programme along with the Data Security Council of India (DSCI), to create a pool of skilled women security professionals in the country.

“Microsoft is also partnering closely with MeitY to skill security leaders in government entities across the nation in cybersecurity,” Dhakad said.

The nation-state actors are targeting critical infrastructure like power.

“We are definitely seeing attacks coming and there are different motives behind why you will go and disrupt critical infrastructure like the outage that happened in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Protecting that infrastructure is very critical,” said Dhakad.

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