I hope with these added incentives, response for recruitment of Medical and Engineering Officers will considerably improve.
To sum up, the programme for recruitment and training is proceeding according to schedule except in the case of technical personnel where some difficulties are being experienced.
The rapid expansion of the Army has necessarily’ meant expansion of training facilities for Officers as well as men. In last October/November, Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun had a capacity’ for 1800 Officer Trainees. Today it has been expanded to take 3,200 trainees. After the emergency we had opened two Officer Training Schools at Poona and Madras with capacity for 450 Officer Trainees each. Today these have been expanded to take 1,500 Officer Trainees each. The Army School at Nowgong which is meant for giving training to the Junior Commissioned Officers and Other Ranks, who are selected for Officer cadre, had a capacity for 230 Trainees. It is now being expanded to 650. This would enable a larger number of Junior Commissioned Officers and Other Ranks in the Army to be trained for promotion to the Officer cadre and also make available experienced trained Officers to the Army. We have also opened a new School of Military Engineering at Baroda with a capacity of 800. The capacity of High Altitude Warfare School has also been doubled from the summer of 1963.
To meet the increased requirement for training for Other Ranks as many as 15 new Training Centres have been established. Simultaneously the capacity of existing Training Centres has been expanded.
I have mentioned to the House only a few institutions where this expansion has been carried out. In fact such expansion of training facilities has been carried out in all training establishment of the Army and the Air Force. Simultaneously, Courses have been condensed and streamlined to meet our new requirements.
The Army has also been working out most appropriate forms of organisation for the task entrusted to it. The formation of Infantry’ Divisions is being adjusted to present day requirements of fire power and operational flexibility. A new Central Command has been established. Certain reorganisations have also been carried out at the Army Headquarters. The Commanders at different levels have also been made aware of their responsibilities so as to ensure that the accepted chain of command functions undisturbed.
Before I mentioned some other aspects of our preparedness, I would like to inform the House of the corrective action that we have taken or which we have initiated in the light of the Enquiry into our reverses in NEFA operations. As I have mentioned many times in the past in this House, the main object of the NEFA Enquiry was to learn military lessons. I would like to assure the House that these lessons have been learnt and learnt well. We have already taken several steps in the nature of corrective action.