‘Operation Sankalp’ was initiated and implemented by the

Correct — C, Indian Navy. Operation Sankalp is the Navy's maritime-security deployment in the Gulf. Merchant tankers were attacked off Fujairah and in the Gulf of Oman in May and June 2019, and the Ministry of Defence announced on 20 June 2019 that the Navy had moved into the Gulf of Oman to reassure Indian-flagged vessels transiting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. INS Chennai and INS Sunayna were the two ships named, with naval aircraft flying surveillance over the same waters.

• (a)Indian Air Force — The task was escorting and reassuring merchant shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a naval job; the air element in Sankalp was naval maritime-patrol aircraft, not the Air Force.
• (b)Indian Army — The Army's operation with a similar-sounding name is Sadbhavna, a civic-action programme in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
• (d)Ministry of Home Affairs — The Home Ministry runs internal-security and coastal-policing tasks; a deployment in the Gulf of Oman is outside its remit and beyond Indian waters altogether.

About two-thirds of India's crude oil arrives through the Strait of Hormuz, so a security scare in the Gulf is an economic emergency for India rather than a distant news item. The Navy answers it with mission-based deployment — keeping a warship on task in a chosen patch of ocean instead of surging ships from home ports after an incident.

Force-attribution items are decided by the theatre. Anything at sea and outside territorial waters is the Navy; a civic-action or hearts-and-minds programme in a border state is the Army; disaster evacuation abroad is usually a joint effort branded by the Ministry of External Affairs. As of the 2022 exam Operation Sankalp meant the Gulf deployment. The Navy re-activated the same name on 14 December 2023 for the Red Sea and anti-piracy patrols after attacks on MV Chem Pluto and the hijacking of MV Ruen, so a candidate reading about Sankalp today is reading about a different sea.

• The Ministry of Defence release of 20 June 2019 states the Navy deployed in the Gulf of Oman to reassure Indian-flagged vessels operating in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
• IN Ships Chennai and Sunayna were deployed, supported by aerial surveillance by naval aircraft.
• The Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region, launched at Gurugram in December 2018, tracked shipping movements in the Gulf during the operation.
• The Directorate General of Shipping issued advisories to Indian-flagged vessels on 13 and 16 June 2019.
• Operation Sadbhavna, the look-alike name, belongs to the Indian Army.

• Reading 'operation' as automatically an Army word.
• Assuming the naval aircraft flying surveillance made it an Air Force operation.

Name the operation, name the force — CAPF has asked the same shape for Sadbhavna, Kaveri and Ganga.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region, which tracks merchant shipping movements, is located at

  • (a)Kochi
  • (b)Gurugram
  • (c)Visakhapatnam
  • (d)Port Blair

  Answer(b) Gurugram — the Indian Navy launched it there in December 2018.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Indian-flagged merchant ships needed naval reassurance in June 2019 because of attacks on tankers in and around

  • (a)the Gulf of Oman
  • (b)the Bay of Bengal
  • (c)the Mozambique Channel
  • (d)the Sunda Strait

  Answer(a) the Gulf of Oman — tankers were struck off Fujairah and in the Gulf of Oman in May and June 2019, which is what triggered the deployment.