By IANS
New Delhi : A grand multilateral naval drill, also involving the US, begins in the Bay of Bengal Tuesday, but the Indian government is fighting shy of publicising the event for fear of annoying its Left allies, who are vehemently opposed to the war game.
In normal course, a flurry of briefings and other events precede such drills. Once they commence, visits by the print and electronic media are facilitated to report on the event and to interact with the participants.
This time, the government has maintained a deathly silence. Officials privately admit this is due to the opposition of the Left parties which even demanded that Malabar-2007, as the drill is named, be called off.
The navies of India, the US, Japan, Australia, and Singapore will be participating in the first such joint exercise, being staged Sept 4-9 in the Bay of Bengal. This is also the largest ever drill the Indian Navy would participate in.
The Left parties, which will be staging demonstrations along the country’s eastern seaboard during the drill, have also started distributing pamphlets against the exercise.
“You see, parliament is in session and you (journalists) will be very busy,” responded an official tongue firmly in cheek when asked why visits by journalists were not being facilitated to report on the war game.
But then, it is not only the Indian government that has developed cold feet – the missions here of the countries involved too have.
Initially, some journalists were told to proceed to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, from where they would be flown out by military aircraft to the ships out at sea. This plan has now been shelved.
“We had planned to facilitate the visit of a few journalists, mainly from the electronic media. We’ve had to call this off as we didn’t receive the necessary slots (on the aircraft and on the ships),” explained an official at one of the foreign missions.
However, visits by foreign media personnel stationed in New Delhi are being arranged.
The Malabar series is now in its 13th year. The drill has previously been a bilateral India-US engagement and has been expanded for the first time.