India- Sri Lanka Joint Exercise Mitra Shakti to Start from Oct 4, Indian Army Contingent Departs
GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 2nd Sep. India and Sri Lanka will start a 12-day long military exercise from Monday. It will focus on increasing counter-terrorism cooperation. According to the Defence Ministry, the eighth edition of the exercise ‘Mitra Shakti’ will be conducted from October 4 to October 15 at the Combat Training School in Ampara, Sri Lanka.
“The objective of this exercise is to enhance close ties and inter-operability between the armies of the two countries and to share best practices in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations.” The Defense Ministry said, adding that the Indian Army has an armed contingent of 120 personnel which will participate in this exercise. In this exercise, a strategic level operation will be conducted at the sub-unit level in an international counter-terrorism and counter-terrorism environment, it said in a statement.
The Defense Ministry said that this exercise will prove to be important in strengthening the ties between the two South Asian countries. It will serve as the main source of coordination and cooperation between the two armies at the ground level.
Significantly, in April 2019, there were serial bomb blasts in Sri Lanka. More than 300 people died in this. In the backdrop of these attacks, India and Sri Lanka increased their counter-terrorism cooperation. The seventh edition of exercise ‘Mitra Shakti’ was conducted in 2019 at the Foreign Training Node (FTN) in Pune.
This military exercise is taking place at a time when Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla is going to visit Sri Lanka. In view of the increasing threat of China, India wants to strengthen its relations with Sri Lanka. The Indian government is disappointed that Sri Lanka has withdrawn from the agreement to develop the East Container Terminal (ECT) at the Colombo port. However, the government is also seeing this move of the neighboring country as a useful step. In fact, Sri Lanka has a $ 700 million deal with Adani Group. Under this, the Adani Group will prepare a terminal for this port. The agreement was announced ahead of Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit to Sri Lanka.
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