Close X
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
ADVT 
India

'India Is Building A Secret N-City In Karnataka'

Darpan News Desk IANS, 18 Dec, 2015 01:13 PM
    India could "deeply unsettle" its neighbours Pakistan and China as it is building a secret facility in its southern Karnataka state to augment its nuclear power for civilian use and upgradation of its weapons, a foreign policy journal has reported.
     
    According to an exhaustive report published on December 16 in the international US magazine Foreign Policy, the work on the project in southern Karnataka began early in 2012.
     
    The 14-page report said tribal pastureland was blocked off with a barbed-wire fence at Challakere for “a project that experts say will be the subcontinent’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons- and aircraft-testing facilities when it’s completed, probably sometime in 2017”.
     
    The project’s primary aim was to expand the government’s nuclear research, to produce fuel for India’s nuclear reactors, and to help power the country’s fleet of new submarines, says the Foreign Policy journal.
     
    “But another, more controversial ambition, according to retired Indian government officials and independent experts in London and Washington, is to give India an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel that could be used in new hydrogen bombs, also known as thermonuclear weapons, substantially increasing the explosive force of those in its existing nuclear arsenal,” the report reads.
     
    New Delhi has never made public details of its nuclear arsenal, which it first developed in 1974, the magazine said.
     
    The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent agency, estimates that India already possesses between 90 and 110 nuclear weapons, as compared to neighbour Pakistan’s estimated stockpile of up to 120. China, which borders India to the north, has approximately 260 warheads.
     
    The report says that China and Pakistan would see the secret project as a provocation. “Experts say they might respond by ratcheting up their own nuclear firepower. Pakistan, in particular, considers itself a military rival, having engaged in four major conflicts with India, as well as frequent border skirmishes.”
     
     
    “I believe that India intends to build thermonuclear weapons as part of its strategic deterrent against China,” Gary Samore, who served from 2009 to 2013 as the White House coordinator for arms control, was quoted by 'Foreign Policy' as saying. 
     
    Other than the Challakere project, Western monitoring agencies were keeping an eye on a similar nuclear facility near Mysuru, also in Karnataka.
     
    “However, Western knowledge about how India’s weapons are stored, transported, and protected, and how the radiological and fissile material that fuels them is guarded and warehoused -- the chain of custody -- remains rudimentary,” the report added.
     
    According to the magazine, a retired official who served inside the nuclear cell at the Indian prime minister’s office, the apex organisation that supervises the military nuclear programme, conceded that other uses besides submarines had been anticipated “for many years”. 
     
    He pointed to a “thermonuclear bomb programme” as “a beneficiary” and suggested India had had no choice but to “develop a new generation of more powerful megaton weapons” if it was to maintain “credible minimum deterrence”.

    MORE India ARTICLES

    Punjab First To Implement Energy Efficiency In School Syllabus

    Punjab First To Implement Energy Efficiency In School Syllabus
    Punjab has taken the lead in incorporating energy efficiency as a subject in school curriculum and in requisite training of teachers in all schools across the state, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday.

    Punjab First To Implement Energy Efficiency In School Syllabus

    Fund-Crunched Punjab Government On Selling, Mortgaging Spree

    Fund-Crunched Punjab Government On Selling, Mortgaging Spree
    Sources in the cash-strapped Punjab government say that several properties and land are either being sold or mortgaged to banks by the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance government led by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. 

    Fund-Crunched Punjab Government On Selling, Mortgaging Spree

    Freezing Weather Grips North India

    Freezing Weather Grips North India
    In the plains of Punjab, Sikh holy city Amritsar recorded a minimum temperature of 4.4 degrees, making it the coldest place in the state. Industrial city Ludhiana recorded a low of 8.2 degrees.

    Freezing Weather Grips North India

    Justin Trudeau Greeting Refugees At Airport Gets Ton Of International News Coverage

    Justin Trudeau Greeting Refugees At Airport Gets Ton Of International News Coverage
    The story of Justin Trudeau greeting refugees at the airport was covered in numerous countries and was atop the New York Times website, along with a video.

    Justin Trudeau Greeting Refugees At Airport Gets Ton Of International News Coverage

    New Appointments In Congress' Punjab Unit

    Charanjit Singh Chani, Bharat Bhushan Ashu and Neeraj Singh Cheema were on Friday appointed as chief, deputy chief and chief whip of the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) of Punjab.

    New Appointments In Congress' Punjab Unit

    New Education Policy To Be Cooperative Federalist: Smriti Irani

    Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on Friday said the new education policy which is under consideration will be cooperative federalist in spirit.

    New Education Policy To Be Cooperative Federalist: Smriti Irani