India holds war room meeting

NEW DELHI (Agencies) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chaired a high-level war room meeting in New Delhi on Saturday evening with senior ministers and defence chiefs to discuss the security preparedness.
The meeting lasted for over four hours and discussed the country’s security preparedness and selective strikes on terror camps across the border.
Defence Minister AK Antony, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram, National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, senior armed forces officials including all the three services chiefs and intelligence chiefs attended the meeting.
The Indian Prime Minister evaluated the security preparedness across the country and the troop response, sources in government said, reported Indian media. The exercise came a day after India put its armed forces on high alert.
“The army, navy and air force, which were already on alert, were Friday put on high alert,” an Indian defence source said on condition of anonymity.
“The services were asked to put a suitable mechanism in place to ensure proper analysis and follow-up of all relevant inputs. The security of vital coastal and offshore assets was discussed with a view to ensuring that these remained fully secured,’ defence spokesman Sitanshu Kar said recently.
The marathon meeting, coming in the midst of heightened terror threat and tension with Pakistan, is understood to have discussed ways to deal with the situation and options India could exercise.
The meeting assumes significance as there is heightened terror threat and tension with Pakistan and the government has already declared that it is keeping all options open on dealing with any external threat following the Mumbai terror attacks carried out by Pakistani terrorists.
Meanwhile, Indian Army is believed to have cancelled leave to all its personnel till April.
Earlier in the day, Defence Minister AK Antony presided a separate meeting with Coast Guard and Defence Ministry officials to review the security of Indian coastline where he cleared the acquisition proposals for the sea-guarding agency.
At a previous meeting with the three Services chiefs on December 18, Antony had reviewed the armed force’s preparedness to tackle the terror threat facing the country.