UPDATE: Air Marshal Arjan Singh Passes away on 16th Sep 2017.
Hello, young warriors! September 22nd marked the official ending of the golden jubilee celebrations of the Indo-Pak war of 1965. The celebrations which started on August 28th, payed tribute to the war heroes by singing their courage stories, organising the exhibitions like Shauryanjali among others.
During the closing ceremony, the President of India and the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces, President Pranab Mukherjee honoured Air Marshal Arjan Singh and other war heroes on golden jubilee of 1965 war triumph.
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He may be just four years away from turning 100, but pride and grit shone through Air Marshal Arjan Singh’s wizened face as he walked up the dias to be felicitated by President Pranab Mukherjee to mark the golden jubilee of India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1965 war.
As 96-year-old, AM Arjan Singh is the only IAF officer to be promoted to the rank of a Five-Star General, walked up to the President with a stick in hand and offered a smart salute, the ceremonial hall at Rashtrapati Bhavan reverberated with a thunderous applause.
Singh, a hero of India’s 1965 military triumph over Pakistan, was among the war veterans invited to Rashtrapati Bhawan for high-tea with the President. Despite a boycott by a section of ex-servicemen of the programme over implementation of their demand for One Rank-One Pension, several veterans attended the event with their families.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 saw the Indian and Pakistani Air Forces engaged in large-scale aerial combat against each other for the first time since the independence of Pakistan in 1947. The war took place during the course of September 1965 and saw both air forces conduct defensive and offensive operations over Indian and Pakistani airspace. The aerial war saw both sides conducting thousands of sorties in a single month. Both sides claimed victory in the air war, Pakistan claimed to have destroyed 104 aircraft against its own losses of 19, while India claimed to have destroyed 73 enemy aircraft and lost 35 of its own. Despite the intense fighting, the conflict was effectively a stalemate.
AM Arjan Singh was chief of the Indian Air Force during the 1965 war during which he demonstrated exemplary leadership qualities to defeat the enemy. As a young squadran leader during the World War II, AM Arjan Singh was involved in Arakan Campaign against the Japanese in 1944 for which he received Distinguished Flying Cross. He was conferred the rank of Marshal of the Air Force in January 2002 and is the only living Five-Star General after the demise of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw in June 2008.
The ceremonial hall, where Vice President Hamid Ansari, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, BJP leader L K Advani, Defence Minister Manohar Parikar and three services chiefs were present, continued to echo with claps for the veterans for a long time.
-PTI
