Much after the fighting in Kargil had ended, came press reports that the intrusions happened because the warnings of the Kargil sector Brigade Commander Surinder Singh had been ignored by his superiors. It was said that the brigadier had, in letters to his immediate seniors sent between August 1998 and March this year, informed them of "increased threat perceptions and possibility of incursions" by Pakistan-backed infiltrators across the LoC in Kargil.These include Singh's communication to the Chief of Army Staff, which stated that his "requests and urgent communication to GoC 3 Infantry Div in view of the enhanced threat perceptions have been turned down in writing". These revelations caused an uproar in an India going into parliamentary elections, even as the army command refuted the press writings. Maj Gen (retd) Ashok K. Mehta argues that the whole matter was something cooked up by the media.
The villain of Kargil has been made into the hero. The press believes that the army has made Surinder Singh the fall guy, when in reality what the journalists did was to literally put words into the Brigadier's mouth, fabricating or doctoring letters on his behalf where none existed. It attributed to him the profundity and clairvoyance of predicting the Kargil intrusions.
The Congress party of Sonia Gandhi went one step further saying that Kargil was stage-managed. This is a rather absurd interpretation of the facts at Kargil, but one that is leading to the politicisation of the Indian army.
Anyone familiar with military procedures, chain of command, and the system of processing threat assessments will understand that Singh was at best exaggerating the threat, at worst, missing the woods for the trees. For journalists reporting the Singh episode, some knowledge of operational procedures was essential to sift the wheat from the chaff, especially in the no-war no-peace LoC environment of Jammu and Kashmir.