CDS (I) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 107 of 120

Correct — C, Jammu and Kashmir. Operation Sarvashakti was launched by the Indian Army in January 2024 in the Rajouri-Poonch belt of Jammu and Kashmir, after a run of ambushes on troops in the forested hill country south of the Pir Panjal. Its distinguishing feature is that it works both sides of that range at once: the Srinagar-based Chinar Corps operating north of the Pir Panjal and the Nagrota-based White Knight Corps operating south of it, mounting coordinated operations so that groups cannot simply cross the ridge to escape pressure. Reporting at the time stressed that the effort leaned on rebuilding human intelligence in the area alongside technical surveillance.

• (a)Myanmar — Indian operations connected with Myanmar are cross-border actions along the eastern frontier, not a named internal counter-terrorist operation, and Sarvashakti was not one of them.
• (b)Manipur — Manipur was in the news through 2023-24 for ethnic violence and for the Army's role in restoring order, which makes it a plausible guess — but that is a different theatre and Sarvashakti was not launched there.
• (d)Chhattisgarh — Left-wing extremism in Chhattisgarh is handled principally by the Central Armed Police Forces and the State police, not by named Indian Army operations.

The Pir Panjal is the range that separates the Kashmir Valley from the Jammu region. The country to its south — Rajouri and Poonch — is forested, thinly held and cut by ravines, and it had been relatively quiet for years before a series of attacks on convoys and patrols from 2021 onwards. Because the two districts fall in one corps' area and the Valley in another's, an operation designed to deny movement across the range has to be run jointly rather than by a single formation.

Named-operation questions reward two habits: linking the name to a place, and linking the place to a reason. Here the reason is geography — the whole design of Sarvashakti follows from the fact that a ridge line, not an administrative boundary, is what small groups were using to break contact. Note also what the operation is not. It is not a cross-border action, and it is not a police-led anti-Naxal campaign, which is what separates option (c) from options (a) and (d). Students should treat the specifics as time-stamped: the operation was current news at the time of the April 2024 exam, and the security situation in the Jammu region has continued to evolve since.

• Operation Sarvashakti was launched by the Indian Army in January 2024.
• It covers the Rajouri-Poonch belt of Jammu and Kashmir, on both flanks of the Pir Panjal range.
• The Chinar Corps (Srinagar) and the White Knight Corps (Nagrota) operate in coordination under it.
• It followed a series of ambushes on troops in the area, including an attack in the Dera Ki Gali sector in December 2023.

• Matching a named operation to whichever state was loudest in the news that year.
• Assuming every internal security operation is an Army operation — most anti-Naxal work is not.
• Confusing Sarvashakti with Operation Sadbhavana, which is the Army's civic-welfare programme, not a combat operation.

As a simple 'operation to place' item, so keep a running list of named operations with year, force and location. CDS has asked about Army operations by name in successive papers.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Operation Sarvashakti was conducted on both flanks of which mountain range?

  • (a)Karakoram
  • (b)Pir Panjal
  • (c)Zanskar
  • (d)Dhauladhar

  Answer(b) Pir Panjal — the range dividing the Kashmir Valley from the Rajouri-Poonch belt.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Indian Army corps is headquartered at Srinagar?

  • (a)White Knight Corps
  • (b)Chinar Corps
  • (c)Fire and Fury Corps
  • (d)Spear Corps

  Answer(b) Chinar Corps — the Srinagar-based formation that operated north of the Pir Panjal under Operation Sarvashakti.