Surgical Strike Heroes Honoured With Gallantry Awards

On the eve of the Republic Day 19 personnel of two Special Forces (SF) battalions that carried out surgical strikes along the Line of Control (LoC) on 29 September of last year were decorated with gallantry awards, including a Kirti Chakra and five Shaurya Chakra.

Departing from practice, the Army did not release the citations for the acts that got the honours. As per an official source:

Every citation contains the description of the qualifying act, and putting that out will let everything be known about the operation, including tactics. Special Forces operations have to be kept secret. We also did not release citations for gallantry awards after the operations in Myanmar in 2015.

The list of awards for these two units includes a Kirti Chakra, India’s second highest peacetime gallantry award after the Ashok Chakra, five Shaurya Chakra, the third highest peacetime gallantry award, and 13 Sena Medal for gallantry. The famed two SF battalions are deployed for counter-insurgency duties in Jammu and Kashmir also.