PIB TrackerAn underground operating theatre on the Line of Control, and 220 surgeries
The Armed Forces Medical Services operated at Tangdhar because the location is shelling-prone. Ten camps have screened 1.50 lakh people and performed 3,500 surgeries.
What happened
- AFMS surgeons performed 220 sight-restoring surgeries under Operation Drishti, the 10th edition of the camp series.
- Location: an underground operation theatre at Tangdhar, Kupwara, along the Line of Control.
- Led by Brigadier Sanjay Kumar Mishra, Head of Ophthalmology, Army Hospital (R&R), Delhi Cantonment.
- Visited by COAS General Dhiraj Seth and DG AFMS Air Marshal Sandeep Thareja.
- Series total: 1.50 lakh+ screened, 3,500+ surgeries across 10 cities.
For Prelims
- AFMS: the Armed Forces Medical Services - the tri-service medical organisation, headed by a Director General; currently Air Marshal Sandeep Thareja.
- Operation Drishti: the AFMS mega surgical eye camp series, envisaged by the Raksha Mantri. 10 editions, 1.50 lakh+ screened, 3,500+ surgeries.
- Tangdhar, Kupwara: a sector on the Line of Control in north Kashmir, reached across the Sadhna Pass - which is why equipment had to be carried over mountainous terrain.
- Why underground: the release states the zone is shelling-prone. An underground theatre is protection, not preference.
- Phacoemulsification: the ultrasound technique that breaks up a cataract for removal through a small incision - the current standard, and equipment-dependent.
- The outreach channel: screening plus a broadcast on Radio Rooh-e-Karnah, the local station - community radio as the last mile in a low-connectivity valley.
- Civic action: military medical outreach to civilians in a disturbed area is a winning hearts and minds instrument as well as a health one.
- The conversion rate: 3,500 surgeries from 1.50 lakh screened is about 2.3% - screening is the larger share of the work.
For UPSC: Civil-military relations in a disturbed area are usually discussed abstractly; this gives you a specific instance with numbers attached. Use it on the armed forces' role beyond combat and civic action programmes, on health access in conflict and border areas, and on Jammu and Kashmir, where the Line of Control detail is what makes the example land.
What it is NOT: The release gives no cost for the camp or the series, and no comparison with what the civil health system delivers in the same districts - which is what would show whether the military is supplementing or substituting for it. It gives no district-wise breakdown of the 1.50 lakh screened or the 3,500 operated, and no follow-up or outcome data: sight restored is claimed, not measured, and cataract surgery requires post-operative review that a camp cannot provide. It gives no estimate of unmet need - how many people in these districts await cataract surgery - so 220 has no denominator. And nothing is said about who provides continuing eye care after the team leaves.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.17 · GS3.20 · Linkage L2
Anchor
Army surgeons performed 220 sight-restoring operations at Tangdhar in Kupwara over two days. They did it in an underground operating theatre, because the location is shelling-prone. That single detail carries more about the Line of Control than most security releases manage in a page.
Substantiation (data)
The series behind it is substantial: ten camps, over 1.50 lakh people screened and more than 3,500 surgeries across ten cities, with the eleventh opening in Srinagar two days later. The logistics are the achievement - phacoemulsification, vitreoretinal and glaucoma equipment carried across mountainous terrain, and patients from six named hamlets reached through screening and a broadcast on Radio Rooh-e-Karnah.
Position
This is civic action doing what civic action is supposed to do. Cataract blindness is reversible, the intervention is one-off, and the benefit is immediate and visible to a whole family - which makes it the highest-trust medical service an army in a disturbed area can offer. The Chief of the Army Staff attending in person is the signal, not the medicine.
Counterpoint
A camp is not a health system. Cataract surgery needs post-operative review, and a team that arrives with its equipment and leaves with it cannot provide that; the release names no local facility that will. Where the military delivers what the civil health system should, the visible success can also mask the reason it was needed.
Problematisation
Nothing here is measured against need. There is no estimate of how many people in these districts are waiting for cataract surgery, no district-wise split of the 1.50 lakh screened, no cost, and no outcome data - sight restored is asserted rather than followed up. A 2.3 per cent conversion from screening to surgery is reported without saying what happened to the other 97.7 per cent.
Conclusion
Hold the image and the caveat together. An underground operating theatre on the Line of Control is the clearest available illustration of the armed forces as a service provider in a conflict zone; whether the state is building the civil capacity that would make such camps unnecessary is the question the release does not raise.
Deploys into: Armed forces beyond combat and civic action · Health access in conflict and border areas · Civil-military relations in Jammu and Kashmir · Preventable blindness and cataract surgery
Ministry of Defence · 2026-09-25 · PRID 2314970 · PIB source ↗