Kargil Vijay Diwas 21st Anniversary: All you need to know about the 1999 India-Pakistan conflict

The Kargil War lasted for over two months. It began in May 1996 and ended on July 26, 1996. India lost 527 of its valuable soldiers in the war. The war was fought in Kargil district of Kashmir where the temperature was minus 10-degree Celcius.

The Pakistani troops infiltrated terrorists into Indian territory and were at a strategic advantage at the beginning of the war just because they had settled into advantageous positions beforehand. Indian troops, however, won the war.

Indian troops gathered information from the local shepherds and were able to gather major points of intrusion based on that. It launched Operation Vijay after that.

It was the NDA government with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was in the centre at that time. The Air Chief Marshal was AY Tipnis.

IAF, Indian Air Force wanted to cross the LoC for the bombing but was not permitted by the Government of India.

The death toll for India is estimated to be around 527 and that of Pakistan which it initially denied was around 357-453.

That time the president of the United States of America Bill Clinton refused to help Pakistan and asked it to withdraw its troops from LoC.

Vijay Diwas is celebrated every year to commemorate India’s victory over Pakistan in the conflict over the mountains of Kargil.

This year it is the 21st anniversary of Kargil War. The war is one of the recent examples of high-altitude warfare in mountainous terrain