Operation Chequerboard

Operation Chequerboard (or Checker Board) was a high-altitude military exercise conducted by India along the Chinese border in North East India during the spring of 1987,[1] in the midst of the Sumdorong Chu standoff.[2] The exercise was conducted to test Indian military response in the Northeast Himalayan region and the US and Soviet reaction to potential Sino-Indian tensions in the region. Scholar Manjeet Pardesi states that it was unclear whether the operation involved mere simulations or also field exercises.[3] However it did serve the purpose of demonstrating to China the Indian resolve and its military preparedness.[4]

The exercise involved 10 divisions of the Indian Army and several squadrons of the IAF and a redeployment of troops at several places in North East India. The Indian Army moved 3 divisions to positions around Wangdung,[5] where they were supplied and maintained solely by air. These troop reinforcements were over and above the 50,000 troops already present across Arunachal Pradesh.[6] The military exercise coincided with statements from India's Chief of Army Staff Krishnaswamy Sundarji that India recognizes the major boundary differences with China and Indian deployments are intended to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt.[1]

General Vishwa Nath Sharma has said that Operation Chequerboard was nothing but only a telecom and headquarters exercise and that Sundarji didn't move any brigades and there was nothing on the ground. He further said that it was separately run by the Eastern Command.

See also

References
  1. George Perkovich, "Nuclear Capabilities Grow," India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1999), p. 289.
  2. Pardesi, Managing the Sumdorong Chu crisis (2020).
  3. Pardesi, Managing the Sumdorong Chu crisis (2020), note 47, p. 549.
  4. Pardesi, Managing the Sumdorong Chu crisis (2020), p. 543: "China also noted Sundarji’s Operation Checker Board as well as the ease with [which] India had redeployed many troops from the western border with Pakistan (where they were equipped to fight in the plains) to Arunachal (where they were equipped to fight in the mountains)."
  5. Disputed Legacy, India Today, May 15, 1988.
  6. "Eye-witness in Tibet", Far Eastern Economic Review, June 4, 1987.

Bibliography
  • Pardesi, Manjeet S. (2020). "Managing the 1986-87 Sino-Indian Sumdorong Chu Crisis". India Review. 18 (5): 534–551. doi:10.1080/14736489.2019.1703364. ISSN 1473-6489.
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