Rajnath Singh will be in Srinagar by noon to review the ground situation in the Valley.

New Delhi:

Defence minister Rajnath Singh will land in Ladakh on Friday morning and visit the Lukung post near Pangong Lake. The Lukung post is in the northwestern side of lake, 43 km by road from the Finger 4 area, where the troops of India and China are in the process of disengagement. Mr Singh will be accompanied by the Chief of Army Staff General MM Naravane and it will be his first visit to Ladakh after the troops of the two sides came to blows I the area on May 5.

After reviewing operational preparedness on the Line of Actual Control — the de facto border between India and China — Mr Singh will fly to Srinagar to review situation on Line of Control.

Lukung is a combined post, where the Indian Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police are stationed.

“The minister will address the troops here. Before reaching, he would visit the paratroopers and see their operational capacity,” a senior official said.

This is not the first time Rajnath Singh is visiting Lukung post,, he said. “The last time in 2016, when he was the Home Minister, that time also he visited and commissioned the all-weather BOP,” he said.

The minister will be in Srinagar by noon to review the ground situation in the Valley.

The visit will be significant as Kashmir Valley has seen a lot of violence over the last two months.

“Pakistan has kept the pot boiling both in terms of infiltration and ceasefire violations,” a senior officer in charge of the operations in Kashmir said.

According to him, Mr Singh will review the ground situation in the Valley. “He would halt in Srinagar for the night and leave for Delhi on Saturday,” an officer said.

Security agencies also said Mr Singh could go to the Amarnath shrine for darshan, for which arrangements have been made. This year, the Amarnath yatra might take place only for 10 days due to the coronavirus pandemic.