NEW DELHI - Funding pressures are exposing the Indian Army's nascent 17 Mountain Strike Corps to severe cutbacks in manpower. Upon reviewing the costs involved in standing up the new corps' formation - budgeted at INR880 billion ($14.1 billion) by the previous Congress-led government when it established the force in July 2013 - Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar has decided the cost implications bear too much pressure on the larger defense budget. The original formation budget agreed upon by the previous government called for spreading out the costs over seven years.
Parrikar will instead freeze the budget at INR380 billion ($6.1 billion), less than half the originally-planned allocation. In doing so the strength of the 17 Mountain Strike Corps - outlined at 90,000 troops - will be halved to 35,000 soldiers.
The Indian Army currently has three such 'strike' corps in its force structure. These are equipped and trained primarily for engaging with Pakistani forces on India's mountainous northwest border. However, the new 17 Mountain Strike Corps was designed with China in mind. China's People's Liberation Army has conducted a large military buildup along the 4,000+ kilometer (2,500-mile) Line of Actual Control (LAC) shared with India. This area of dispute erupted in a limited war in 1962 after India discovered a Chinese-built road in a high-altitude area it calls Aksai Chin. Since the war, India has claimed that China illegally occupies 38,000 kilometers of its Askai Chin Himalayan territory, while China lays claim to 90,000 kilometers that cover the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims is historically part of southern Tibet.
Under the plan pushed by the Indian Army, the new 17 Mountain Strike Corps would initially begin deployment along the disputed China border region by year-end 2016 and have a new headquarters in place at Panagarh in West Bengal by 2018-19. That timetable may now stretch out to 2021-2022 (the declared Ministry of Defense deadline). Further, the smaller force will prove less a strategic deterrence to China while lessening the ability to minimize the PLA's quantitative military edge along the two countries' shared border.
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