On the 73rd Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort announced that our forces are the pride of the nation and thus a new post of Chief of Defence Staff, who would be above the three service chiefs, namely Chief of the Army, Chief of the Naval Staff and Chief of the Air Staff will be created.
“Our forces are India’s pride. To further sharpen coordination between the forces, I want to announce a major decision from the Red Fort. India will have a Chief of Defence Staff- CDS. This is going to make the forces even more effective,” he says.
This was a recommendation made during the Kargil war in 1999. And it was strongly endorsed by the then Defence minister, Manohar Parikkar. As coordination between all the three services was very important, the creation of a post as Chief of Defence Staff is the need of the hour.
This is his sixth consecutive address to the nation as the Prime Minister ever since the BJP-led NDA. He also talked about the Jammu and Kashmir and expressed that ending Article 370 was important step in fulfilling Sardar Patel’s dreams.
In his 90-minute speech, he said that his government believes in making reforms for the welfare of the country and so the centre will invest Rs 100crore to develop modern infrastructure that will aid in the economic growth of the country. He referred to reforms such as GST and Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) for aiding the growth process.
The other aspects he threw light on were single use of plastic, water conservation, population explosion, digital India etc.
